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My Livecoding.tv account deletion saga
- detaro 11y agoShameful. Since both her and a part of Livecoding are in the EU, EU data protection laws probaby make the situation fairly clear (and give her tools do deal with it, but it shouldn't be necessary)
- reality_TV 11y agoThis is a terrible practice for consumers, but a huge strategy win for startups(AOL zombie account trick .. hope they forget about wanting to delete or cancel). I ran into this awful practice with Uber after a hack they know about lets your account be hacked by London drivers who rip you off for rides in London (im in the states). I went to my forgotten Uber account to cancel and found out I have to email support and further I cant remove all payment options from my account either. WTF ... as a consumer any company who follows such a practice needs their ass handed to them. On the other hand as startup person I can see the slimey merit in following said practices.
- thameera 11y agoI've been contemplating streaming my work for the same reason as the author of the post, but now I'm having second thoughts about choosing livecoding.tv. The merits will be there only until people realize that they're being tricked.
- volaski 11y agoThe type of value Uber provides is different from the value livecoding is trying to provide. People will continue to use Uber as long as it provides convenience because that's the value. As for livecoding, it's a different story.
- DrMJG_HN 11y agoHmm, i don't know how you bring Uber in this conversation, but we are really not in the same space or sharing any information with them.
- reality_TV 11y agoYou along with other startups make it incredibly hard to cancel ones account. It's a trick to keep your user base numbers high vs. offering an easy way for the user to delete their own account themselves, as most startups use to allow.
- vespakoen 11y agoHere is my interaction with livecoding.tv's support about removing videos, they don't seem to like removing stuff from their website! https://www.livecoding.tv/video/designing-a-touch-screen-interface-4/ https://www.livecoding.tv/video/designing-a-touch-screen-int... @ 20:37
- roflchoppa 11y agocan you submit DMCA claim to them?
- nv-vn 11y agoDoubt it. Their T&C probably protects them from that kind of thing, but I can't even find it on their site right now.
- deepnet 11y ago2.Except for Broadcaster Content already downloaded by users, the foregoing license granted by you terminates regarding a specific piece of Broadcaster Content once you remove or delete that Broadcaster Content from the Livecoding.tv Service. -- From Livecoding T&C https://www.livecoding.tv/terms/ https://www.livecoding.tv/terms/ seems from the T&C you should be able to remove or delete videos
- vespakoen 11y agoI don't need to since my request was a simple way to remove multiple videos at once, or have an option to not save my stream as videos. I can delete the videos one by one though, it's just a lot of work, especially when the connection is flaky (it produces a ton of videos in that case)
- DrMJG_HN 11y agoPlease bear in mind that Livecoding.tv cannot be the place yu resolve personal issues with your business partners. We asked you to provide more evidence on your identity and you did not follow up. We cannot start deleting other user's content based on a single email from an individual we do not know.
- kordless 11y agoThe issue here is not that Livecoding.tv isn't removing this individual's account, but that individuals sign up for things with the expectation they have rights to their data. Here's a gem from Livecoding.tv's TOS which clearly indicates their intent with other people's data: > All Materials contained on the Livecoding.tv Service are the proprietary property of Livecoding.tv or its subsidiaries or affiliated companies and/or third-party licensors. All trademarks, service marks, and trade names are proprietary to Livecoding.tv or its affiliates and/or third-party licensors. Livecoding.tv reserves all rights not expressly granted in these Terms of Service. Unless otherwise expressly stated in writing by Livecoding.tv, you are granted a limited, non-sublicensable license (i.e. a personal and limited right) to access and use the Livecoding.tv Service for your personal or internal business use only. In short, if you sign up for an account on their site, they own EVERYTHING. They don't have to delete your account because all of their users agreed to these terms by using the site. Looking through the TOS, there is nothing mentioned about canceling accounts. I'm empathetic to the author of the article, but I will point out that expecting ownership of your content after giving up ownership of your content is logically unsound. Shaming aside, not signing up for a centralized service with limited rights like this in the first place would have resulted in less suffering for everyone involved.
- s5edvvddd 11y agoI think you are quoting the part the protects their( livecoding.tv's ) intellectual property and , and not the streamer. The license for the streamers stars at 11.Broadcasters. It seems you are allowed to cancel the license: 11. Broadcasters a.License from Livecoding.tv. If you sign up for an account as a Streamer, subject to your compliance with these Terms of Service, Livecoding.tv hereby grants to you a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, freely revocable license to use the Livecoding.tv Service for the uploading and distributing of authorized digital content, including videos (" Broadcaster Content "). and: 2.Except for Broadcaster Content already downloaded by users, the foregoing license granted by you terminates regarding a specific piece of Broadcaster Content once you remove or delete that Broadcaster Content from the Livecoding.tv Service.
- kordless 11y ago
- deftnerd 11y agoI've been unimpressed with LiveCoding.tv's spammy tactics as well. The decided to enable email notification of video streams for users who have already signed up by using an opt-out system rather than opt-in system. I created an account out of casual interest and then weeks later got slammed with dozens of spammy "stream is starting" emails every day. I did actually try to delete my account as well but gave up when it appeared that they didn't allow for that option. Instead I've just been training Google that all the email from them is Spam.
- seivan 11y agoThey are super spammy, I've unsubscribed several times and still get emails. Sticking with Twitch.
- jraines 11y agoI was about to sign up, with about the same reason and interest level as the post author. How's Twitch for this?
- thecatspaw 11y agoTwitch officially doesnt allow non-gaming related (game-dev is ok) streams. As long as you dont stream anything explicit you should be ok though
- detaro 11y agoTheir new Creative branch might cover more branches of coding.
- bentpins 11y agoAs of last week they expanded the definition of what they allow, explicitly mentioning coding http://help.twitch.tv/customer/portal/articles/2176641-creative-faq http://help.twitch.tv/customer/portal/articles/2176641-creat... Q. What if my creative broadcast is gaming-related art, game development, programming, or involves creation of music? A. You are free to choose whatever you think is the most appropriate category for your creative broadcast, so long as you adhere to the Rules of Conduct for the category when doing so. Q. Does all Creative category content have to be gaming related? A. No, you’re free to broadcast your creative process for any genre!
- bnj 11y agoCan you change the gender on your account? Switch it over to male and set up a couple dozen pseudonyms to throw off their count. If Livecoding has aligned their interests with the gender ratio of their users to the extent that they're treating you like this, makes sense to speak back to them on their own terms. IMHO.
- drakonka 11y agoUnfortunately at this point that redirect back to home on login that I discovered after changing my password is still there, so I doubt I can change any part of my account details now; it's just going to sit there until they decide to actually delete it (if ever). But I did manage to change the profile description and stream title to make it clear that I am waiting for the account to be deleted before the redirect was put in place. I didn't actually connect their shadiness about deleting my account with gender and am honestly not convinced that this is it. Sure, they were kind of pushy about promoting the site to women, but there is actually no gender identification on my profile other than my profile picture. I can't remember if gender was specified somewhere in my account settings but then not publicly displayed at this point.
- kuschku 11y agoSuggestion: Write a Cease and Desist letter to Livecoding.tv (Livecoding Ltd) 20-22 Wenlock Road London, N1 7GU England That should get them to stop. A letter such as this costs less than a Euro, and means they have no excuse not to act on it. Otherwise you can try sending them a fax, that usually also has better chances at success with businesses. ---------------- I kinda want to move my twitch streams over to livecoding just to be able to get into this deletion mess and send lawyers after them now...
- gaius 11y agoThat's odd, their domain name suggests they are based in the small island nation of Tuvalu.
- 11y ago
- minimaxir 11y agoIt's worth noting that when Livecoding.tv first launched, you were forced to register and log-in to watch any videos. It took an entire thread on Hacker News to force the founders to backpeddle once they were caught: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9800321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9800321 This isn't the first YC startup I've seen with such blatant "growth hacking" tactics, and it's disappointing.
- maxerickson 11y agoWhat does "caught" mean in this context? If you can't use the site without registering, it probably isn't a secret that you can't use the site without registering. I can see using a phrase like 'called out' or 'called on their bullshit' or whatever, but I don't see how they were 'caught'.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- maxerickson 11y agoSo they were caught making TechCrunch not mention the required sign up? So is that somehow ethically questionable to choose not to take down the login wall? I don't get it. I wouldn't sign in just to check something like this out and think it is probably a foolish obstacle to place in front of their potential users, but I don't get why it is somehow sneaky or whatever.
- have_faith 11y agoAs much as I dislike their attitude, 'caught' is the wrong word here. You get 'caught' doing something that you where trying to hide. You can't hide the fact that you need to register to view videos, so you can't be caught.
- i_s 11y agoLooks like it still requires a signup, but lets you watch a few streams before it blocks you with the signup modal.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ShirsenduK 11y agoSo they not only use Flash but every ugly trick in the book.
- nv-vn 11y agoI'm not very fond of the admins on there (but not really in the same sense). I signed up maybe the first week that the website was up and found a bug. I reported it to the admins, who then criticized me of trying to hack their website and insisted that I was the same person as another user who had spammed their site. They told me that our IPs were the same (and when I asked them to tell my what my IP supposedly was they simply refused). They banned my account after that and I was forced to make a new one (because at the time it was impossible to watch without an account). The next account I made worked for about a week, but then they banned it as well, I guess because it was from the same IP. I don't think I even used that account once after signing up. Finally, I signed up on a VPN because I wanted to watch a friend who was going to stream on there, and that's the account that I've been using since. I think that they tried to ban that one as well after I logged in from my actual IP because it would log out all the time and I couldn't use any of the available account integrations to log in (having to do so directly by the username/password).
- austenallred 11y agoThis is what happens when you're overly defensive; you think any bad news is an attack on you, even if it's constructive and in good faith.
- DrMJG_HN 11y agoPlease send me a personal message and I'll track your case and see what happened.
- empressplay 11y agoDude, honestly, you just need to stop.
- anon5_ 11y ago> "You are scheduled to be deleted on our next cron job. Nothing complex." Is this serious? What's a cron job have to do with knocking out information from a rdbms? I imagine a cron job could be useful if there was a script to clear out any static files - but you can also invoke the script manually. "Nothing complex" :)
- 467568985476 11y agoPerhaps it's a manual cronjob - developer wakes up every morning at 9:00am, SSHs onto the production system, starts up MySQL, runs all of today's DELETEs.
- rhizome 11y agoIt's a devops world, nobody needs DBAs or Sysadmins anymore.
- pkaye 11y agoMaybe their sysadmin got replaced by a cron job.
- kuschku 11y agoI’ll quote another comment from minimaxir: > You're joking, but a quick Google search of [site:livecoding.tv banned] shows that's exactly what is happening. > https://www.livecoding.tv/2pointoh/ https://www.livecoding.tv/2pointoh/ > https://www.livecoding.tv/hekton/ https://www.livecoding.tv/hekton/ Which shows their usual procedure for deleting or banning is... vandalism.
- DrMJG_HN 11y agoHi Alex from Watch People Code, i know you do not like us a lot because we did not agree to pay you money to move to Livecoding.tv. Please be honest and add a disclaimer that you are Alex from Watch People Code and you and your team members are trolling with different usernames in this thread and on Livecoding.tv. https://www.livecoding.tv/2pointoh/ https://www.livecoding.tv/2pointoh/ also called Dan by first name is an individual in New York city who's account we specifically banned for a) showing pornographic content on Livecoding.tv the second time after he was warned the first time. b) harassing women on channels
- jtwebman 11y agoI don't understand how a company this small doesn't get the public opinion matters. I am will to bet they are not going to be around much longer.
- drakonka 11y agoIt looks like Livecoding have now updated my profile for me, to claim I am "spamming them": https://www.livecoding.tv/lazer/ https://www.livecoding.tv/lazer/
- nemexy 11y agoCan anyone please explain to me why a YC company is making such a terrible name for themselves at a website which is literally FULL with people, who they should aim at building positive image with. I am pretty sure that over 70% of their users have at least a username in this community. I hardly have ever seen a worse way to respond to a marketing crisis. edit: Now the answer of the co-founder(you can find it below) is way better and it should have been the first reaction to this post. Hopefully there can be a happy result to both sides.
- austenallred 11y agoBecause the founders suck at dealing with users. YC doesn't run your company for you.
- nemexy 11y agoI really did not wanted to blame YC. My mention of them is mostly because they are the biggest incubator, so people who get in should have at least minimum amount of marketing skills. They literally make fool of themselves in front of their main "customers" and apparantly we are still talking about one of the cofounders. You are trying to run companies worth millions and do such stupid mistakes, it is just beyond understanding for me.
- austenallred 11y agoI think it's because that doesn't scale to seventy companies without being a hinderance. I'm sure the skills are there, the problem is unless the founders ask UC doesn't know where to deploy them.
- benologist 11y ago
- brchsiao 11y agoSo the cron job turned out to be an invented lie told to a user they essentially assumed would be too stupid to think about it. Which is it then, that they e.g. have a tired support team using a canned response that includes a lie? Or is it the founders themselves thinking their audience are fools? Sure, separate business policy from code, but it seems unwise to assume your users are technically ignorant when your site is about inviting programmers to stream their work.
- GhotiFish 11y agocould be a monthly cron job. Principle of charity right? Of course, assuming that it is a monthly cron job and the account actually is scheduled for deletion then, the question would be: Why in gods name would you not just say that?! "Your account is scheduled for deletion at so and so time", and if at that point you're complaining that it's not fast enough, no one would really have much sympathy for that. It's still possible this isn't an example of a vindictive and petty individual lying through their teeth. It may still be an example of someone who with poor PR skills, and is not coping with the situation those poor PR skills created.
- lisowski 11y agoIf livecoding keeps acting like this they are gonna lose whatever foothold they currently have of coding live streaming. With twitch.tv's recent announcment to open up streaming to creatives it is only a matter of time until they capture this audience too.
- tymekpavel 11y agoI'm shocked this is a YC-backed startup. It seems standards have fallen substantially.
- escobar 11y agoI made an account to see how their system worked after thinking about doing a stream myself a few months ago. After I signed up and poked around their platform, I was none too pleased with the features or way their application worked. They emailed me too many times (almost every day) in the first week and I just marked them as spam and went along with my life. Glad to hear about what's going on here, I will be sure to never stream or give a website with this type of management my business :)
- facepalm 11y agoI think actual deletion of accounts is not a functionality that is high on any startups list - disabling is probably the usual course of action? However, to lie about it is another matter entirely.
- deepnet 11y agoIt is a legal requirement in the EU under Data Protection Laws.
- moron4hire 11y agoOutright deletion of data, especially anything used in financial calculations, might run afoul of Sarbanes-Oxley in the United States. I say "might" because it's not exactly spelled out that way in the regulation. Basically, any sort of reports that are used to make financial decisions must be replicable. You have to be able to show an auditor how you came to your numbers. You have to show how the report would have looked at the time it was made, and what data it would have contained. I could potentially see raw count of users, or counts of users combined with popularity of videos (and growth of popularity across those videos) be a part of plans on how to monetize such a site. If Livecoding.TV had made revenue projections based on some future monetization plan and had started circulating this plan amongst potential investors, it becomes a serious landmine to hard-delete data. Most places assume this just means "keep backups", but I don't know anyone who is operationally prepared to restore year-old backups of databases and running application code to be able to appease such an auditor. Full compliance is really hard, so I almost always advise people to go for soft-delete instead. There are any number of technical and business reasons why soft-delete is better, too. If this report that a 3rd party registered a new account with the same name just to be able to troll everyone involved turns out to be true, that would be one of those reasons. That said, that's a completely different issue than privacy compliance. Any sane authorization system should make it easy to de-authorize specific sets of data for everyone. No data request meant to go out into the world should ever lack an authorization check. Given the difficulties of keeping tabs on internal- versus external data, I just generally believe all data requests should come along with an authorization check, regardless of whether or not it's required, because you can't ever really predict what code a jr. programmer is going to reuse some day.
- ChicagoBoy11 11y agoIn the span of a just a few days we have YC-backed companies being publically outed for engaging in behavior which most of us consider pretty egregious and would certainly warrant any rights as YC founders to be revoked. The tone of commenters (here and w.r.t the Homejoy) can be described as mild shock. This particular example is perhaps even worse than the Homejoy issue, as it seems the founders have taken to personally attacking an individual user for, as far as we can see, are pretty legitimate claims. But I think probably the least shocked people are the YC partners. If you are Paul G./YC, what do you do about this? By far the biggest question that YC must confront as it expands into research, bigger and bigger classes, new types of involvement through fellows, etc., is how to retain their ability to suss out, deal with, or prevent things like these. I think they are fully aware that they can't. If anyone hasn't figured it out already, YC is becoming the first 21st century university. In order to get there, they have to become significantly bigger, and just like the startups they fund, that's the metric that's on their radar. I don't think these events are a sign of YC's negligence. Instead, I think YC is slowly transitioning to a new era in the company. Paul G and the gang are incredibly brilliant. They knew the odds when they decided to continue this incredibly rapid growth of batches and outreach. They aren't surprised by these events; they are just moving to a stage where things like this are unfortunately the cost of doing business. If Paul G is cooking dinner for you and your few buddies over the summer every night, you aren't getting away with this. If you are now one of thousands of people fighting for (or trying to avoid) their attention, you certainly can. Go around to any top school, and you see the same. Out of your couple thousand bright-eyed, brilliant freshmen, there inevitably are a couple bad apples. But none of them would think that a solution to this is to shrink class sizes.
- phpnode 11y ago> If anyone hasn't figured it out already, YC is becoming the first 21st century university This is a ridiculous statement, it is nothing like a university.
- ChicagoBoy11 11y agoYC - Research - https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-research https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-research (clearly universities have nothing like this) Over 700 companies have gone on through YC, so they now have a few thousand alums and actively maintain an Alumni network -- really wish universities had something like this! The companies go through the program in cohorts for a set amount of time -- they call these "classes". Not sure if universities have anything of the sort. Sam Altman himself said that soon he "we will have to do something" with respect to housing. Again, nothing like I've seen any university do. My personal favorite, though, is the part where they get everyone to come to dinner together to exchange experiences and whatnot. If only Harvard figured out that they could use their beautiful dining hall for this sort of thing...
- s4chin 11y agoI had initially considered streaming on livecoding.tv for the same reasons as yours. Definitely won't do it now.
- gaius 11y agoI hope your cat gets better soon!
- drakonka 11y agoThank you very much! He is better now (knock wood), but needs medication 3 times a day and may have a permanently damaged bladder. But as long as he's happy and peeing I'm happy.
- denniskane 11y agoDid anyone else see "Eli the Computer Guy" slamming YC on his channel about an email exchange he had with the founder of Livecoding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h66PNIUtaaE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h66PNIUtaaE I found it to be fairly entertaining...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- downandout 11y agoI have noticed a recurring theme with YC companies. Many of them....let's just say that they weren't selected for the strength of their technical implementation or people skills. A good example of this is Magic. This is a site that few people probably remember, but they raised $12M at a $40M valuation after 2 weeks in existence back in March. More than 7 months after raising this money, the company, whose entire business model is dependent upon people sending them SMS messages detailing the things that they need or want, has yet to place a tappable SMS link on its home page. The simple fact of the matter is that money from VCs and/or an endorsement by YC speaks only to the potential of the idea and the pedigree of at least one founder. Nothing else seems to even be considered, even when writing eight figure checks. Given this situation, no one should be surprised that YC companies sometimes go off the rails like this.
- DrMJG_HN 11y agoYou might dislike Ycombinator because of whatever reason from the past, but Ycombinator is overall by any objective measure very successful in building companies. Am not saying this just because I was in Ycombinator - if you are honest to yourself you will agree.
- klapinat0r 11y agoWould you mind elaborating on "because I was in Ycombinator"? Typo or did something change during today?
- downandout 11y agoI said nothing about disliking YC. I said their selection criteria very obviously does not include technical ability or people skills.
- ne01 11y agoThey don't deserve you! You had the full right to ask them to delete your account! Even if you where "an unreasonable user" they should never treat their users like that (just for their own sake)! Livecoding.tv should immediately admit this huge mistake and apologize to prevent any further damage to their public image! Calling your user a spammer?? Shame on you!!!
- krisdol 11y agoAt the beginning of her post, with her explaining why she got into streaming, she almost convinced me to start an account myself; needless to say, by the end of the post and judging from the comments here, there is no way in hell I'd sign up.
- kuschku 11y agoGood news! Many other livestreaming sites allow this!
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- rasz_pl 11y agoObviously what Livecodings Michael is pulling is some high level disgusting BS. Still some metacognition is in order. I highly recommend "Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus" > so in reply to “how often?” the answer was basically “not often”. At some point it got pretty frustrating to keep receiving these emails, but whatever. >I let them know that their last “soon” was over a week ago with no clarification of when their “soon” is gee, I wonder if the two are connected somehow. TLDR: Girl lies, because she thinks its more polite to lie instead of being upfront ("I dont know If I will even stream at all, stop asking me" versus "I am totally into you and we will definitely date, just not today because .. umm.. my cat is sick!"), girl is outraged at being lied to in exchange (polite "we will delete your account soon" versus "no, we dont delete accounts ever, get lost").
- TheDong 11y agoThat's a misrepresentation though. There's a difference between polite white lies and malicious lies. In addition, there's a difference between free users lying when they are approached unasked and a service lying about your personal data. Comparing them is disingenuous because they really aren't comparable. A more comparable thing would be if she asked them "Do you have plans to implement a way to batch-delete videos" and they responded with the fine white lie of "I've made sure our technical team is aware of this feature request, thanks" rather than "no, buzz off". Any time a user makes a request to a service, especially regarding personal data, it better be answered honestly and well.
- zachorr 11y agoI don't really get the appeal of Livecoding.tv. I've streamed a few times on the service and it's not as good as any other live streaming service. Their email marketing is borderline spammy, their tactics are questionable, and they don't offer a particularly solid feature set, or anything specifically helpful for live streaming coding that you couldn't get with YouTube or Twitch (categories, I suppose?). The argument might be made they have audience specifically looking to watch people write code, but I've never seen more than ~40 people at a time on one stream. You'll probably see more traffic on Twitch in the Programming category.
- deadcoding 11y agoHuh, I saw this livecoding site advertised here by the founders, seemed like a great idea and I hoped it would kick off. Sad to see the administration is unprofessional. I wonder how people can fail so hard at public relations. If they didn't want to delete her account all it would have taken is a "Sorry, accounts can't be deleted from livecoding.tv". Instead they had to turn this into something that destroys the reputation of their new site.
- Exuma 11y agoIt's really amazing how poor it is. There really isn't any possible reason that would make it reasonable.
- DrMJG_HN 11y agoTo be frank, there were only a few videos on the account and the account was not even visited by any other user last 30 days. It was just pending on our tasklist.
- zodiac 11y agoI think if it were only a matter of taking a long time to delete the account, we wouldn't be so unhappy. To me, the reason your team's behavior seems extremely unprofessional are 1. Not telling Liza when her account would be deleted 2. Telling her her account was deleted but not actually deleting it 3. Sending the "Do you and your friends want to disturb us with this" email 4. Editing Liza's account to claim that she was banned for spamming
- slaxman 11y agoWow! This is the worst excuse for not completing the task that you have promised. It doesn't matter whether she had videos or not, it doesn't matter if anyone visited her profile or not. The only thing that matters is that your customer asked you to delete your account. And all you have done is lie, give excuses and edit her profile page with a vengeance that I (and others) cannot comprehend.
- Exuma 11y agoIt's also funny given the cofunders last tweet: https://twitter.com/jcbgreen https://twitter.com/jcbgreen
- cnp 11y agoThis happened to me too!!!!! It took so long, and was so annoying, and i'm still not even sure why they stopped coming.
- late2part 11y agoSounds like livecoding.tv is run by a bunch of jerks.
- david_mitchell 11y agoI'd guess this sort of thing results from the obsession over growth. They are desperate to make their user aquisition/retention numbers look good so they do scammy things to keep accounts. It's sad to see the aggressive behaviour though.
- chrischen 11y agoIt's probably more likely that acquisition or retention isn't good, and this is done out of desperation.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- AlwaysBCoding 11y agoIt's probably this. I've livestreamed on Twitch + LiveCoding and have no clue why you would ever use LiveCoding. Twitch and Youtube seem like they're better in every capacity.
- DrMJG_HN 11y agoNo, is not the case and is not warranted to spread wrong information. Please see main reply.
- david_mitchell 11y agoI understand you are under a lot of stress here but your defensive behaviour is making your situation worse rather than better. You are going through the comments on this story and adding posts trying to defend your mistake instead of apologising for it. This will not solve your problem.
- adrusi 11y agoWow. I did one stream there a month or so ago, and an admin showed up in my chat. They didnt do anything too out of tge ordinary, but I found their attitude to be a little too controlling. It seems like they're trying to build an educational platform and expect all their users to be on board with that. The admin interaction lift a bit of a sour taste in my mouth so I didn't log in again. Their business model and their management competency are just too poor. They will not be able to compete with twitch.
- DrMJG_HN 11y agoWe do not really censor much on any channels except the channel is that of a child or woman. We want Livecoding.tv to be a place for all including teens and women as we told you in emails and on the site. We have a lot of under-age streamers and viewers and thus we cannot allow guys to go over the red line on their channels.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago"except the channel is that of a ... woman" Would you care to expand on this a little bit? (I'm hoping for an answer like "it keeps out the mra/gg riffraff", btw)
- vertis 11y agoSlightly unrelated note, but I received a spam email from Michael@Livecoding.tv on Saturday. I will NEVER EVER use a site that spams like this: > Hey Luke, > I've been searching code repos and found that you also love coding. Would be cool to see your awesome code and projects on Livecoding.tv > Livecoding.tv is a livestreaming platform for coders to share their code and hang out. We have users from 194 countries and 3,000 products are being built live using over 35 different programming languages and frameworks. Come and complete your first 10 stream hours on Livecoding.tv and get a chance to win a cool Livecoding.tv T-shirt :) > If you love your friends, also forward this email to them. > Michael > Founder, Livecoding.tv > Livechannel: https://www.livecoding.tv/drmjg https://www.livecoding.tv/drmjg
- deepnet 11y agoWeirdly on that page you can hire the CEO, Dr Micheal Garbade, for $35 / hr. https://www.livecoding.tv/drmjg https://www.livecoding.tv/drmjg HIRE ME
- denniskane 11y ago>Python, Django, Sencha Touch : >platform architecture feedback >code review >solving technical issues >preparation for exams >help on homework >fixing bugs in code Hmm... I don't find it particularly weird for the CEO of the next Twitch to be in the business of helping kids out with their programming assignments. I mean, how much does Larry Page get for his services... I would assume at least $50/hr!
- karmicthreat 11y agoI'd argue that is one of the few things live coding is doing right. Trying to get people in the habit of using the platform to exchange cash for help.
- joeevans1000 11y agoPerhaps a faster strategy would have been for the OP to just hire him to delete the account.
- 11y ago
- allanmacgregor 11y agoJust asked for my account to be deleted, their whole response to this situation is insane.
- DrMJG_HN 11y agoIn general it is better to get all facts before making a conclusion. Nobody had any intent of not fulfilling the request.
- tomcam 11y agoDear Liza: We're gobsmacked to find an actual female posting to Hacker News. Cool! It's nice to see the ladies posting about something other than makeup or boy problems. Could you let us know what your posting schedule for HN would be? And if you have any other friends with ovaries who know vim from vi could you get them posting regularly, preferably scantily clad or at least posting an occasional screen shot of their coding sessions to Pinterest in between Jimmy Choo haul videos? Please let me know your weekly schedule so we can send updates to everyone on Hacker News with a Y chromosome!! Your pals at HN
- dang 11y agoI'm going to assume that this is a seriously misfired joke instead of the bannable offense it initially looked like, but please don't post anything like this to HN.
- tomcam 11y agoChoice is a) seriously misfired joke. Was satirizing the Livecoding people. Feel free to ban, though. If HN is too delicate for satire I suspect I'm a bad fit.
- learning_still 11y agoI don't know what your comment said, but just remember that Livecoding is funded by Ycombinator.
- MichaelGG 11y agoHN isn't "delicate". But HN tries to keep a high signal-to-noise. That means, generally, aggressively downvoting off-topic comments including attempts at humour (that aren't otherwise substantial). Not doing this means that threads quickly devolve into reddit-like grabs to try to be clever. Adding sexist language is presumably what dang is referring to by bannable offense (then realising it was a bad joke).
- tptacek 11y agoSatire is great. Unfortunately: most comments on HN that are written like that are not satire. The problem of misconstrued satire is as old as the Internet. And because satirizing misogyny on HN is a high wire act in the best of circumstances, you'd be smart to put some explicit indication that you're joking when you attempt it. Or just don't attempt it at all.
- johnmaguire2013 11y agoThank you for this post. I've been looking into using Livecoding in the exact same way the author has, and now know that it is not the platform for me. Maybe there is space for a competitor?
- kuschku 11y agoYeah, a competitor where users can easily fork the code and send a pull request (maybe even with support for a webIDE?) sounds like it could easily make profit in this situation... I'm going to look into it.
- empressplay 11y agoSo, 12 hours on and the account still hasn't been deleted... I mean, at this point you have to assume none of the co-founders has the ability to delete it (because common sense would suggest they would have by now, if they could have, to mitigate the on-going public-relations disaster) probably because they outsourced all of their development and really have no clue about how their website actually works. Under normal circumstances, this could be understandable, but I think there's an obvious irony when the site in question streams people, well, coding! Now, I suppose it's fair to argue you don't need to know rocket science to make a space game either, but in this case, I'd think there'd be an expectation the people running the site actually at least kinda-sorta know how to code themselves. Or at least be able to delete some records from a database.
- learning_still 11y ago> at this point you have to assume none of the co-founders has the ability to delete it Perhaps they were hoping that OP would stream a how-to.
- yokohummer7 11y agoIf deleting some rows is not feasible, I would even suggest special-casing the page and making it redirect to the 404 page, even though the user data would be still there. I mean, do somethimg. Seeing the issue not resolved even after the founder recognized the problem is utterly painful.
- learning_still 11y agoI think it's hilarious. Maybe they aren't taking it down because it's getting so many hits. edit: They'll be marketing it as "look at this huge spike in traffic we got this month" when talking to advertisers and content creators.
- memonkey 11y agoOr maybe they think any PR is good PR
- 11y ago
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- empressplay 11y agohm. livecoding.tv seems to be built on top of some version of mesh-app.io (which doesn't seem to be publicly available yet.) I wonder if this has something to do with their inability to delete accounts...
- DrMJG_HN 11y agoThis looks like a clickbait from Camwhite in Atlanta. This is totally inaccurate and factually wrong like many statements made hear. i recognize some of the usernames here in the thread. I see that there are a lot of comments from competing companies and users we had to warn on Livecoding.tv for bad behavior.
- phpnode 11y agoYou are totally delusional, the uproar here is not caused by your competitors, it is caused by your own incredibly poor behaviour.
- allanmacgregor 11y agoYou need to stop and get your shit together, seriously you are doing irreparable damage to your company. I'm already skeptical there is any coming back from this situation don't make it worse.
- mumphster 11y agoThanks for the heads up. Gonna try to get my account deleted. http://livecoding.tv/ell http://livecoding.tv/ell hopefully they get the message.
- k3n 11y agoThey've also been spamming reddit pretty hard. As a mod of a programming sub, I've had to add their domain to the automod spam list for post spam, and then report a user or two to /r/spam for comment spam (and are now shadowbanned) . Kind of surprised to learn that they were YC.
- gxespino 11y agoShame. I was really enjoying streaming while I coded. Not so much the livecoding platform (very buggy from my experience), but the activity itself. I don't think I'll stream on their site again after this. Can't stand to support founders who treat their users like this. Twitch.tv it is.
- DrMJG_HN 11y agoIt was just a backlog we had. Her account and the multiple accounts her friends created days ago never had any big content on them. There is really no incentive for her request not to be fulfilled. You can contact awakekat on Livecoding.tv to hear her feedback on how we treat women: https://www.livecoding.tv/awakekat/ https://www.livecoding.tv/awakekat/ Her friends just created multiple accounts within a short time frame and thus our support thought they were just trolling together.
- drakonka 11y agoI don't know of any friends creating multiple accounts at all. If anything my friends learned to _never_ create an account with your site. I would also appreciate it if you did not "play dumb" in your communications with me. To be honest I can't believe this is actually still happening: http://i.imgur.com/NT6xH5X.png http://i.imgur.com/NT6xH5X.png
- slaxman 11y agoNear the bottom on the imgur link: ``` I think it is just a complete misunderstanding you have ``` I might be wrong. But this is almost border line delusional!
- kurige 11y agoIt seems to be a go-to phrase for him. From a video linked elsewhere on this page: https://youtu.be/h66PNIUtaaE?t=17m38s https://youtu.be/h66PNIUtaaE?t=17m38s That video was posted in July...
- mumphster 11y agowhen twitter bots go bad: https://twitter.com/livecodingtv/status/661046865488580610 https://twitter.com/livecodingtv/status/661046865488580610
- drakonka 11y agoJust noticed that the text on my profile has now been changed to "Marked for removal from database". Perhaps they fixed their "cron job". mumphster mentioned on Twitter that that he just got banned also and actually managed to have an exchange with the CEO: https://twitter.com/elgruntox/status/661063421283012608 https://twitter.com/elgruntox/status/661063421283012608 https://twitter.com/elgruntox/status/661063608302866432 https://twitter.com/elgruntox/status/661063608302866432 I'm not sure where the first line is coming from about any kind of information that they were "doing migrations" (I have had no such communication). My videos were already deleted because I deleted them one by one before they changed my password, put in a redirect back to home on my account, and updated my profile for me. Anyway, at least they're not referencing dice.com, which I have nothing to do with, anymore. I guess we're just back at square one now.
- drakonka 11y agoJust got another email from Michael trying to convince me that they did the right thing and deleted my videos from my account for me. I just cannot understand why they keep acting like this - did they think I'd forget that I deleted my own videos earlier in this process? http://i.imgur.com/Ea55D6G.png http://i.imgur.com/Ea55D6G.png
- joeevans1000 11y ago"I hope the tension has calmed down a bit". That doesn't come across very well.
- zodiac 11y agoI can't speak for everyone, but unless some extraordinary new information comes to light I personally would never use livecoding.tv after observing this incident. It seems from the comments on this thread that a lot of HN readers agree with me. And since livecoding.tv is targeted at programmers and a lot of programmers read HN, this is the end of livecoding.tv. It's surreal to watch it happen in real time.
- DrMJG_HN 11y agoA lot of the people posting here are from competiting sites or users we had to warn or ban on Livecoding.tv for one reason or the other. Please see the comments below. Most of the usernames in this thread are familiar to us.
- zodiac 11y agoHow is this relevant to what I posted?
- phpnode 11y agoNo one believes this, but even if it were true it would not excuse your behaviour. It is not a defence.
- oib 11y agoLike kuschku which you falsely accused of being some "alex" ? [1] You're not making yourself any more believable... At this point its probably better to stop posting and reflect on all of this for a day. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10491132 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10491132
- Kiro 11y agoPeople really need to read all of DrMJG_HN's comments in this thread. I can't believe what I'm seeing. Completely delusional.
- philbarr 11y agoAnd for a laugh, they need to check out how much karma he hasn't got...
- ericdykstra 11y agoI hope Liza comes up with a follow-up post: "the saga continues" They continue to deny any wrongdoing, and continue in their favorite game of copy-and-paste-replys on Twitter. https://twitter.com/livecodingtv/with_replies https://twitter.com/livecodingtv/with_replies Here's one directed at me (and 2 other people, since I guess in this instance they were too lazy to copy and past the reply 2 extra times: https://twitter.com/livecodingtv/status/661153102750425088 https://twitter.com/livecodingtv/status/661153102750425088 This deep in a hole and they're still convinced they are the victims... Unbelievable.
- empressplay 11y agoHm. All my critics are competitors or bad actors we had to ban. Convenient. Or paranoia. In all seriousness though, I worry about the co-founder(s) mental health. It's all fun to poke at people and say they've lost it, but running a startup is a highly stressful endeavour and it shouldn't be ignored when people break, which I suspect has happened in this case. It's a tough situation. They'll want to defend what they have, tooth and nail, because it means everything to them. We'll want to counter against what they say, because we feel it's wrong to let that sort of thing go unchallenged. But who wins?
- madaxe_again 11y agoAye. There's a lesson here to be had for all of us, which is that sometimes you've got to step back and let someone who isn't as emotionally invested in the company as you take the reins, as you can end up doing extraordinary damage to yourself by acting rashly. I speak from experience - I've been at this lark for a decade now, and have on more than a few occasions found myself sincerely regretting how I've responded to a situation, as I've ended up emotional and escalating the matter, rather than responding rationally and calmly. I recall literally pounding my head on the office wall - in front of an investor - painfully to this day. Childish. We all mistakes, but we also have to learn when to admit our fault, and when to step away from a situation because we aren't the right person to handle it.
- wmoxam 11y agoI put in a deletion request for my account as well (https://www.livecoding.tv/wmoxam/ https://www.livecoding.tv/wmoxam/). The handling of this situation has completely nuked any trust I ever had in this service.
- denniskane 11y agoIt seems to me that this guy ("Dr" Michael Garbade) is just a complete fraud. His supposed doctoral thesis can be found here: http://www.slideshare.net/mjmjg/differences-in-venture-capital-financing-of-us-uk-german-and-french-it-startups http://www.slideshare.net/mjmjg/differences-in-venture-capit... I mean, just read this small snippet. It honestly seems like it was written by an average high school freshman... ========================================== 1.2 Research Objectives Although there are certainly differences in the venture capital financing of startups within one given country, this study no more than focuses on the differences across countries: US, UK, Germany, and France. The Boston way of venture capital financing of startups indisputably differs somehow from the California way. Likewise, the London way of venture capital financing of startups indubitably deviates from the Manchester way. Supposedly, the Paris way of venture capital financing of startups is distinctive from the Lyon way. Moreover, the Munich way of financing of startups alternates from the Berlin way. The research study willfully neglects a priori the minor differences within each country and views each country as a homogeneous cluster. Therefore, the implicit assumptions of this empirical research study are: * There is a US way of venture capital financing of startups * There is a UK way of venture capital financing of startups * There is a German way of venture capital financing of startups * There is a French way of venture capital financing of startups ========================================== Then, if you want a real laugh, go to page 24 of that "thesis" to behold Figure 1 (Link between e-Commerce and e-Business). There are literally 2 circles shown, one inside of the other. I really think YC has been played here.
- mckee1 11y agoTheir wikipedia page[1] appears to have been edited by the founder too. (In which the company is described as a "multinational"). [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livecoding.tv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livecoding.tv
- denniskane 11y agoTo be fair, self-editing your own wikipedia entry with exaggerated terminology as an early stage startup is highly understandable in the grand scheme of things. Self-editing your own PhD credentials seems to be a step or two beyond that kind of behavior, haha :)
- fyarebox 11y agoI'm amazed. Michael, if you're reading this - get someone else to handle this situation. Anyone, even it's just the guy who does SEO. Your company has appeared on HN before, and as a YC-backed company you should probably have some idea of the type of people who are part of this community. It amazes me that you believe you can respond to this story by attempting to doxx trusted long-term users (or rather, just plain lying about their identities) and claim that the people here are attacking your company. Even more so that you believe you can claim that a "majority of the comments [in this HN thread] come from competitors and banned users" (@livecodingtv). Most of the people in this thread have never used your products (myself included) - and in response to this story, many who may have never will. You are the one attacking your company. Stop lying on Twitter. Stop trying to avoid criticism by claiming that your (outraged) potential customers are competitors or spammers. Stop trying to remove pseudonymity from HN commenters (especially the ones trying to be at least slightly sympathetic to your company). Consider the fact that you may be facing legal action for some of your behavior. The way you respond to these accusations will undoubtedly be reflected in any proceedings, and at at the moment I don't think you're helping your case. (IANAL) I'm not going to make jabs at your psychological state like a few of the comments here have, but it would be in your interest to visit a mental healthcare professional (if only to check you're capable of handling the pressure caused by this story).
- drakonka 11y agoJust a quick update - I can no longer reset my password, so either they have actually deleted my account now (great!) or just changed the email address. Either way there is no use speculating now as my profile page is a 404 and there is no way to tell with certainty one way or the other whether my account has actually been removed (I suppose one could try to register the username "Lazer", but I am way too sick of this to go near their registration form again). I filed an ICO report early this morning when the libel on their website stayed there overnight with no sign of changing hours after the cofounder's and Y Combinator president's replies; I simply didn't know what else to try and someone suggested looking into the ICO. So I guess it will just be in their hands now and I'll see what comes out of it, if anything. For now I think this is the end of the road in terms of getting the best possible outcome with a company like this. They are clearly not going to admit their mistake and they seem to still be in (seemingly really bad) damage control mode. I think any further interaction with them would just be a waste of time at this point.
- austenallred 11y agoThanks for this. It was really fun to watch a CEO completely torpedo his startup in less than 24 hours by publicly flipping the bird to a message board filled with its would-be users for some reason I cannot begin to fathom. We should do this again sometime. EDIT: After reading through a bunch of the CEO's comments, I'm now seriously concerned there may be a mental illness at play. I probably shouldn't have made light of the situation; calling out several users such as minimaxir as Alex from LiveCoding honestly seems delusional.
- dongping 11y agoThe CEO is not even trying to do the damage control.
- austenallred 11y agoThey're tweeting that most of the comments on here are coming from competitors. I think the problem is they're so overly defensive they're completely in denial.
- drakonka 11y agoWell, it looks like my profile is back again...again with accusations of spam... https://www.livecoding.tv/lazer/ https://www.livecoding.tv/lazer/
- mauz 11y agoWow
- drakonka 11y agoIt looks like they _removed_ my username and profile, then _recreated_ it just for the sole purpose of this. This is pretty amazing.
- mauz 11y agoThis is the weirdest sequence of events I've ever seen from a company. At this point, from the point of view from someone that's not involved in this, it's more intriguing than it is frustrating.
- drakonka 11y agoSomeone else pointed out elsewhere that maybe it was just a troll recreating the profile and not Livecoding themselves. I suppose that's possible, too.
- tsuraan 11y agoAnd, for those still watching the drama, they've actually updated your profile again, so the first "banned" line now reads ANNED FROM LIVECODING.TV FOR SPAMMING BANNED FROM LIVECODING.TV FOR SPAMMING+ BANNED FROM LIVECODING.TV FOR SPAMMING The bizarre "+" is still there, but you've lost a "B" in "BANNED", so it looks like another by-hand update of your profile.
- fyarebox 11y agoWow. This could be another user re-creating the account to create drama, though. Is the rest of the profile info (favorite line of code, etc.) the same? I wouldn't call it impossible, but this seems like such a deliberately bad move that I can't even believe it was done by livecoding.tv
- dang 11y agoThis has gone beyond PR disaster theater and become an outlier. I've temporarily banned Michael's account until it is resolved. Commenters here should be considering scenarios in which glee would not be a humane response to all this.
- denniskane 11y ago> Commenters here should be considering scenarios in which glee would not be a humane response. Maybe I'm just having a brainfart, but I simply don't understand this sentence at all, and I really would like to. I'm really not trying to troll you, I just feel like this is an interesting statement that could use some clarification :)
- nilved 11y agoI think they're suggesting that there's an explanation for Michael's errant behaviour that we should be more sympathetic toward. I don't buy it, though.
- denniskane 11y agoAh, okay. So, there are possible scenarios that are going on in his life that we should be considering before laying certain gleefully harsh judgments on him. Gotcha.
- klapinat0r 11y agoI read it as, commenters should not resort to gleeful uproars following said comment. As in, let's not turn this: I've temporarily banned Michael's account Into a plethora of snarky/glee comments like "yay, finally" (contributing nothing but a lynch mob) I could be wrong though, but that's how I understood it.
- dang 11y agoI meant glee about the whole thing. I added "to all this" to try to make that clearer.
- drakonka 11y agoSo it really looks like the new profile _was_ deleted by Livecoding and then registered by someone else, who initially put a modified version of the libel back onto it and has now linked to their own video. I would like to stress that this really does _not seem_ to be Michael's doing this time, but a third party who saw this and grabbed my previous username. On a slightly different note - I have seen some people express some sort of satisfaction in Michael's poor handling of this, specifically on this thread. To me it does not feel right to post these sorts of reactions to what seem to be unwell, possibly almost delusional comments on the part of this person. In fact it seems to be potentially dangerous and irresponsible. This person seems genuinely confused and is going through some possibly serious mental or emotional issues. Something just seems very off about these responses. I am the last person to defend his unprofessional business tactics or communication skills and of course this whole thing seems to have been grossly mishandled, but at this point I don't think a person in their right rational mind would react in the way he has and I would think very hard before making personal comments that might push him further into turmoil right now. Of course nobody has to listen to me, but I feel it needed to be said. I didn't write this post or post these screenshots to make a joke out of a person or be cruel to someone who seems to be unwell. I just wanted my account deleted.
- DougMerritt 11y ago> I just wanted my account deleted. Totally fair.
- jld89 11y agoIs there an equivalent to livecoding.tv that I can use?
- Shic 11y agoE Nervous system singa.e
- eliteraspberrie 11y agoA word of advice to founders from the US: ignoring user requests to delete accounts or personally identifying information is a crime in some countries. (I'm only familiar with French and Canadian law.)