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An Indian startup is abusing DMCA to curb online dissent against their products
- darkhorse13 6y agoMaybe include the name of the startup in the title?
- eznzt 6y agoI'm not Indian so "An Indian startup" says more to me than "WhiteHat Jr". Titles have a length limit so both things probably don't fit.
- glaucon 6y agoIt's implied in the article that the DMCA behaviour began after WhiteHat Jr was acquired by Byju, described as an ed-tech giant.
- modernlearner 6y agoThey were acquired for $300m, could have put that in that title? https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/05/indias-byjus-acquires-whitehat-jr-for-300-million/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/05/indias-byjus-acquires-whit...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- oneoffcoder 6y agoThis has actually become a David vs Goliath situation. Pradeep Poonia has been at the forefront fighting this curbing of free speech and abuse of content moderation. They've started a subreddit(https://www.reddit.com/r/whiteHatSr https://www.reddit.com/r/whiteHatSr) and numerous channels on YouTube to spread awareness but most things keep getting taken down. The main issue is that these people are promoting coding for kids aged 6-12 to be a silver bullet that'll land them Rs. 150,000,000 salaries. Gullible parents are shelling out $1000 for very basic classes in scratch. And FOMO is being used to drive this.
- higerordermap 6y agoThe same kind of parents who send them to JEE coaching and it will fill IITs/NITs with super hard working but actually mediocre kids. Expectable that it was the next stage of IIT rat race.
- JdeBP 6y ago... which Forbes India had a piece on a fortnight ago. * https://www.forbesindia.com/article/take-one-big-story-of-the-day/cracks-in-the-fomo-code-is-coding-the-new-crayon/63305/1 https://www.forbesindia.com/article/take-one-big-story-of-th...
- 908B64B197 6y agoThat will surely help closing the skill gap in the country [0]. Seriously isn't that market beyond saturation? [1] [0] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/95-engineers-in-india-unfit-for-software-development-jobs-report/articleshow/58278004.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/95-engineers-... [1] https://restofworld.org/2020/india-engineering-degree/ https://restofworld.org/2020/india-engineering-degree/
- glaucon 6y agoAlways amusing to watch corporations utterly ignore the significance of the Streisand effect.
- paulgb 6y agoYet again with the DMCA, this comes down to the problem that there is basically no disincentive from abusing it to remove content you don't want out there. In 20+ years of its existence, there have been I think one (maybe two now?) cases where someone actually had to pay up damages after a false takedown. Meanwhile, it's an effective way to censor anyone as long as you're willing to bet they won't be able/inclined to put up an expensive legal defense.
- glaucon 6y agoDifficult to be sure this is authentic but if so this is just the icing on the cake ... https://old.reddit.com/r/whiteHatSr/comments/jghwoc/okay_so_whitehat_wants_to_hire_engineers_to_make/ https://old.reddit.com/r/whiteHatSr/comments/jghwoc/okay_so_...
- wccrawford 6y agoIt doesn't sound like they used the DMCA at all. They used copyright takedown requests across various platforms. They never actually filed a DMCA complaint. You could argue that those takedown requests only exist because of DMCA, but they should exist, regardless of the law. The problem here wasn't even that this company filed the takedown requests. It's that Youtube/etc complied with them when they shouldn't have. And to make it worse, blamed the victim and refused. That is, until Forbes got involved and made it higher profile, and then Youtube looked at all of it and realized the mistake. There's nothing here to indicate that this situation won't continue to be the norm for takedown requests, though. They haven't apologized or said they'll improve their processes. They just swept it under the rug.
- modernlearner 6y agoPoonia’s videos take on various claims that WhiteHat Jr has made. For instance, WHJ advertises a certain child called ‘Wolf Gupta’, who, after learning to code with the firm, got a job at Google that pays in crores. Poonia points out in his video that Wolf Gupta’s age keeps changing across advertisements, from nine to 14, as does his salary package—from Rs1.2 crore to Rs20 crore to Rs150 crore. They're A/B testing any numbers/variables they can find?? Give someone a hammer and everything looks like a nail I guess. Makes me glad truth in advertising laws exist: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/media-resources/truth-advertising https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/media-resources/truth-advert...
- hoveringhen 6y agoWeird name to go with in the first place.
- hawkoy 6y agoTrendy english sounding names are getting popular in India.
- JdeBP 6y agoThis is part of a larger whole. At the same time as this, a competitor company is asserting that employees of WhiteHat Jr have been falsely posing as children taking its courses. * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppx1BF54Ep0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppx1BF54Ep0 * https://inc42.com/buzz/whitehat-jr-alleged-of-impersonating-a-school-kid-to-attend-competitors-trial-class/ https://inc42.com/buzz/whitehat-jr-alleged-of-impersonating-...
- luminati 6y ago@dang - can you switch the title to the original.
- kumarvvr 6y agoThis is a classic scam. The company in question,WhiteHatJr, claims all sorts of nonsense and targets Indian parents, promising to turn their kids into AI ML super coders. I know Indian parents. They will sweat out hundreds of thousands of bucks so that their kid gets to be part of this "revolution". Its really scammy and pathetic. I guess the lockdown has a lot of kids sitting at home, saving their parents transport, food, misc costs. Also, the Indian parent mentality now screams, my kid is sitting at home, so he better be learning something, outside the normal school stuff. and boom, you have the perfect environment for scammers.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- villgax 6y agoSuch a pathetic practice from a company that just got a boatload of money to throw at any criticism.
- achow 6y agoVery recently this startup WhiteHat Jr. was acquired for $300M by another EdTech startup Byju (valuation: $11B!). Byju is known to be very aggressive in sales and marketing.. and they have been controversial. https://www.moneylife.in/article/criticism-of-top-marketing-spender-byjus-leads-to-linkedin-deleting-dr-aniruddha-malpanis-account/61028.html https://www.moneylife.in/article/criticism-of-top-marketing-...
- hawkoy 6y agoHow does byjus have that valuation? That seems a little too much. Is there something shody going on here? Their financial report says they are profitable since last year. This probably explains it a little: https://www.reddit.com/r/IndiaInvestments/comments/ifjh95/how_is_byjus_able_to_generate_a_revenue_of_72m_in https://www.reddit.com/r/IndiaInvestments/comments/ifjh95/ho...
- darkhorse13 6y agoNote that Byju's reported revenue in 2019 was $78M, so we are looking at a multiplier of around 140! Probably nothing shady though, just VCs being VCs, hoping to unload this on the public through an IPO, make their money and get out.
- 2Gkashmiri 6y agothis is such bs. i have kids in immediate family and have taught them scratch and html and some other stuff. granted they are only 8-12, they enjoy doing things. one of them is a 4 year old kid who can now fully start his "own laptop", start file manager and run his favorite cartoon episode and endlessly play "Gcompris". this kid can't read anything more than "ABC" but can operate a pc just nice.
- techaddict009 6y agoGod knows how their FB ads are being approved. They have faces of Unicorn startup CEO or Founders like bill gates, elon musk, etc.