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Hi drakonka, I have only just found out about this, and was until now not aware of what happened. I don't know why my cofounder Michael marked you as spam, and
by jamiegreen 11y ago
Hi drakonka, I have only just found out about this, and was until now not aware of what happened. I don't know why my cofounder Michael marked you as spam, and I will ask him to contact you. I can only apologise for the handling of your account deletion, it really is not acceptable that it took so long, so we will make it a priority to improve this.
- tshtf 11y agoDo you really think drakonka would want your cofounder to contact her after all this stalking?
- drakonka 11y agoHi Jamie, Thanks for getting in touch. I would love to just have my account deleted and move on. No need for Michael to contact me.
- Mithaldu 11y agoIdle curiosity: Are you aware that you have zero believability at the moment now unless you can demonstrate results or at least your commitment usefully?
- tylerlh 11y agoYou read the article and see the updated profile on your site, right? I think being slow to respond is the least of your worries.
- whiteboarder 11y agoAny response on the weird comments such as "DICE.COM EMPLOYEE SPAMMING LIVECODING.TV" that were put on the profile?
- jessedhillon 11y agoDo you have any explanation as to why you are running a page with her name, publicizing her employment and calling her a spammer? That requires both a deliberate effort to research her, and then the poor judgment to actually post the text, presumably in an effort to shame her.
- Kiro 11y agoIf this is how you usually "mark spammers" her account issue is the least of your problems. It makes it look like the site is run by a paranoid schizophrenic. Most unprofessional thing I've ever seen from a YC company, even if the allegations would be true.
- minimaxir 11y agoYou'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/
- tlrobinson 11y agoWow, this behavior is pathetic. Just delete the accounts and move on.
- gtremper 11y agoI can't believe this is real.
- rje 11y agoWhy is the page still up with the spamming accusations on it? If you're a co-founder, please take care of it ASAP instead of wasting drakonka's time 'contacting' them.
- nissehulth 11y agoAmazing, a response including even more stall tactics.
- engi_nerd 11y agoYou can do more than apologise. You can stop calling her a spammer, delete her profile entirely, apologise profusely, and make sure this kind of utter ridiculousness never happens again! I suggest making sure your cofounder never has anything to do with user relations.
- drakonka 11y agoLooks like you guys just corrected the spelling of your website name on my profile (previously "LIIVECODING.TV"), which is still accusing me of spamming. Is this the kind of improvement you had in mind?
- nissehulth 11y ago"like watching a train wreck in slow motion" is an expression I've never felt the need to use. Until now. This is unacceptable behavior from any business.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- DanielBMarkham 11y agoIt's painful to watch.
- DrMJG_HN 11y agoYou seem to enjoy this whole thread, but very coward that you hiding your real identity. Can you at least post your Linkedin profile url as comment for others to know?
- phpnode 11y agoYou just called the woman that you were harassing a coward.
- drakonka 11y agoAre you just copying and pasting these replies now without looking at which comments you are replying to? My name is literally on the website this thread links to, and my LinkedIn profile is on the Contact page. Of course it was also up for hours last night on the Livecoding profile you vandalized. I think you're confused.
- austenallred 11y agoAre you technical? If you are, this should really be a "take care of it then talk to my cofounder about it" type of thing.
- deepnet 11y agoFounder Comment was over 1 hour ago and the seeming libel and doxxing of Lazer's full name, and employer are still up - an apology in words but not actions - messing with someones employment is egregious.
- 467568985476 11y agoAs minimaxir pointed out, she's not even an employee of Dice.com, she's works at the similarly named video game studio DICE. A legal minefield for Livecoding.tv for sure...
- kuschku 11y agoAnd she’s in the EU, and the company is headquartered in London, meaning this is going to have serious legal consequences. If I had stocks in the company, I’d have sold by now. It’d be a miracle if the company would still be up and running by next week.
- kenko 11y agoOMG. If they're headquartered in London I assume she can sue them under British libel law.
- kuschku 11y agoAs I mentioned here[1] they at least mention this address on their site. Might not be headquarters, but at least means they are operating under british law. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10487394 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10487394
- mintplant 11y agoUh, you should be acting a lot more decisively than that, considering that your co-founder is currently torpedoing your company's reputation in front of a large part of your potential userbase.
- orless 11y agoWith this being on HN top (and with the word spreading), this story has potential to kill livecoding.tv.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- detaro 11y ago2 hours and only a spellfix (which is even more insulting than nothing). Still no clue about priorities it seems. I guess after Twitch Creative all press is good press... Let's hope for some press.
- rasz_pl 11y ago"Hey, I just learned my cofounder Michael assaulted you. I will ask him to contact you again!" this is too good, it could only get better if you could somehow manage to slip "soon" in your reply.
- brchsiao 11y agoIf I may allow myself a guess, possibly the line of thought at livecoding.tv, given the other examples of banned users on your site, and given the lie about the cron job, is that these are merely moronic, worthless customers you're alienating that you wouldn't want on your site anyway. Perhaps you think (thought?) that this is another such instance. This is not the case. You've created a huge leak in your potential enthusiastic user base, which now consists of "programmers willing to stream their content who also happen not to be HN readers." Mistakes happen. Many startups have survived bad publicity on HN. Your actions have not ensured you a spot in this roster. Even generously overlooking the juvenile behavior of your cofounder and ban messages, the narrative of livecoding.tv stored in the collective brain of HN is now "fails to respond to user and petulantly refuses to apologize for seven hours." The best thing you can do right now is to identify the responsible individual in your company, apologize specifically, and abjectly, as a company, on behalf of this individual, remove all the ban messages, delete OP's account, explain how a cron job came to enter the story, and both explain and apologize for why this took two hours to resolve after you heard about it. (Disclaimer: I was about to sign up for livecoding.tv for similar reasons as OP just yesterday. I'm disappointed to know this might've happened to me.)
- ilogik 11y agoI'd also add that this is probably the worst time for them to do sit like this, considering twitch is launching twitch creative
- DrMJG_HN 11y agoNo site in the world likes banning any user. We only put a temporarily ban on certain users or in severe cases a permanent ban. As explained we are a community and you can expect that there a lot of people who hide their real identity and misbehave in away they wouldn't do in real life.
- gaius 11y agoOn the about page Michael is described as customer‑focused ... and professional Might want to re-think that too.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- DanBC 11y agoTwo hours later her profile still has the "Dice.com employee" (which is false) and "banned for spamming" (which I think is false.) Mishandling personal information is a big deal.
- tptacek 11y agoWhat's wrong with you? Take the page down. There's a whole HN thread sitting here hitting fucking refresh on it over and over again waiting to see how much more drama your insane team can generate over this. Are you running a company, or a very elaborate piece of nerd performance art?
- brazzledazzle 11y agoNormally I'm not a fan of comments like this but this guy is running a company, a YC backed one in fact, and I think the application of a clue stick might be just what's needed.
- nissehulth 11y agoI may be jumping to conclusions, but this reddit comment by Jamie Green may shed some light over his situation... https://www.reddit.com/r/timferriss/comments/3g2mjg/tim_ferriss_me_would_love_ama_ideas/ctuacjo https://www.reddit.com/r/timferriss/comments/3g2mjg/tim_ferr...
- DanBC 11y agoFeel sorry for Jamie. See also the latest twitter comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10488919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10488919
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoThis? https://twitter.com/StartupLJackson/status/639632654741041152 https://twitter.com/StartupLJackson/status/63963265474104115... "Startup L. Jackson @StartupLJackson Sep 4 [Startup L. Jackson Retweeted Ced] How to make your team completely ineffective. Treat communication & collaboration w hostility. Done."
- jsmeaton 11y agoWow, is there any recovering from this? Usually I'm against the internet machine latching onto people that have stuffed up. But you're trying to publicly humiliate a user that just wants to delete her account. I'll be surprised if you last much longer.
- iaw 11y agoCould you elaborate on why her page was edited after your comment to correct the typo on your website's name? It seems a little strange that that was the course of action taken here.
- Exuma 11y agoHi, how is your company such an absolute colossal failure? Reading the replies of this thread, it keeps getting worse and worse. You should be doing a hell of a lot more than "ask him to contact you". DELETE THE FUCKING ACCOUNT!
- notabot 11y agoWow, this is unbelievable. More than two hours have passed and the page is still live. Someone even fixed the typo, which is even more insulting.
- livecodingwtf 11y agoIt's been three hours; and their account is still just filled with libel that you put there. So far everything you and your cofounders have done has made this problem worse and larger. You are untrustworthy and incompetent.
- n72 11y agoSo, since its 3 hours since you said this and the page is still up, the charitable interpretation is that you don't have the technical know-how to take it down yourself and are frantically trying to get in touch with Michael, who does. Or, you've gotten in touch with Michael, and he's just being a stubborn dick and is refusing to take it down. If that's the case, I feel kind of sorry for you. Sucks the fate of your company seems to have hinged on an apparently unhinged individual.
- tzs 11y agoAs part of cleaning this mess up you need to also institute an inviolable policy that you will never edit a user's profile without the user's permission unless legally required to. If there is something in a profile that you cannot allow to remain on your site then you should delete the profile content. If you want to name and shame spammers it should be done somewhere other than the profile. This is important because it never occurs to most users that you might edit their profile, and so it never occurs to them that you might edit other users' profiles. Thus, when people see something on someone else's profile they assume the person put it there.
- 0x0 11y agoMaybe they should change their name to LiveDoxxing dot tv...
- facetube 11y agoEnjoy getting sued for libel.
- Twirrim 11y agoIn all seriousness, you need to remove your co-founder's ability to do anything on your site. If that's not practical, you should seriously think about making an exit yourself. For one, your business is now effectively dead in its primary market, it's going to be a long hard road back, if it's even remotely possible; for a second thing, you've just had your name and personal and professional reputation completely tarnished by what appear to be Michael's actions, and made worse by the childish retaliation on OPs profile (regardless of who did that). The loss of your own reputation is going to be harder to come back from. Reputable VCs doing even basic due diligence are going to see this incident and aren't going to want to have anything to do with you, unless you show swift and decisive action, one way or another. So far your response has been neither swift nor decisive. For what it's worth, asking Michael to contact OP seems like a really bad idea. He's hardly shown good customer services skills so far, do you really think he's going to do a better job suddenly?
- DrMJG_HN 11y agoIt will be honest if you could disclaim your name to the people reading here so they know how to intepret your comments here. Not good if you just hide your face and troll.
- orless 11y agoI believe you're not in position to explain us what is "honest" and "good". You are destroying your product, your work and your name at the moment. This is very sad to watch, I really wish you'd stop.
- hluska 11y agoYou have completely destroyed your company. And now you seem hell bent on destroying your own reputation. If this wasn't so fucked up, it would be sad.
- hluska 11y agoIn retrospect, this was unnecessarily cruel. Unfortunately, I can't edit it anymore so the best I can do is apologize.