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WhiteHat Jr’s founder files $2.6M defamation suit against critic

691 points by villgax 6y ago

ap46 6y ago
Nice going, nothing like shutting voices whilst being an education startup geared at teaching kids to code
pja 6y ago
This site is doing nothing but embedding the original Tweet: https://twitter.com/whiteHatSnr/status/1330202709203578882 https://twitter.com/whiteHatSnr/status/1330202709203578882
- villgax 6y ago
  https://www.forbesindia.com/article/take-one-big-story-of-the-day/whitehat-jr-and-the-curious-case-of-disappearing-dissent/63627/1 https://www.forbesindia.com/article/take-one-big-story-of-th...
bzb6 6y ago
In a place as corrupt as India it’s likely they’ll win.
- villgax 6y ago
  Yeah they got acquired by Byju's(Disney collaboration) for $300mn, so their PR/Legal team has no bounds.
- mangamadaiyan 6y ago
  I'd love for them to lose, but unfortunately reality leans in the direction you've indicated.
- shi314 6y ago
  Even Gambling has become legalised in courts by these StartUps and VCs.
tempstar 6y ago
They are the biggest scam in India capitalizing on FOMO of Indian parents. They charge heaftily (more than $2000) to teach app development (using Scratch, Firebase etc.). Their staff is poorly paid and just reads off scripts. Their staff doesn't know even the basics of CS (as evidenced in this video: https://youtu.be/1Y21eSn_zSM?t=64 https://youtu.be/1Y21eSn_zSM?t=64, when the student asks how files are stored in Cloud Storage, she says the files are stored in real clouds. There's another where the teacher can't tell the difference between Java and Javascript) Their ads are highly misleading and straight up false with made up names of students who earned millions of dollars in salary while their fellow peers are playing Cricket. (https://in.news.yahoo.com/wolf-gupta-byju-whitehat-jr-090945630.html https://in.news.yahoo.com/wolf-gupta-byju-whitehat-jr-090945...). You can imagine the effect this will have parents (especially in India where parents are known be super competitive). This guy, Pradeep Poonia, has been actively campaigning against them. His youtube channels were taken down, Quora account was taken down, Twitter, even Reddit (if i'm not wrong). His current youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdv4_YNXrIQtGHSVXnY-1mg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdv4_YNXrIQtGHSVXnY-1mg) has lot of videos on this. He especially has a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN1DOE7GoYw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN1DOE7GoYw) where he accessed their internal slack (shady I know, but even Whitehat Jr is also not playing fair) and showed their organized effort into suppressing online dissent by fake twitter accounts, trolling etc. WhiteHatJr was recently acquired by another firm Byju's (whose CEO is the plaintiff in this lawsuit) that also does the same thing, but for entire school curriculum. In a world, where there is Khan Academy, they sell their subpar product at a very high price, exploiting Indian parents' ignorance and willingness to do anything for their kids education.
- timkam 6y ago
  Interesting. This reminds me of the story of Siraj Raval, a formerly highly influential YouTuber on machine learning and blockchain topics: https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2019/10/16/why-siraj-ravals-plagiarism-is-the-future-of-plagiarism/ https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2019/10/16/why-siraj-ravals-... Some years ago, when I started getting into machine learning, I couldn't tell he is a fraud. Considering that just before he was broadly exposed as a fraudster, he was invited by the European Space Agency (ESA) to give a talk, I was in good company. I think the only reason he got exposed is because he started making stupidly bold claims, attributing high-profile original research to himself. If it weren't for this, he would probably still be accepted by the mainstream because the case a few experts could make against him wouldn't be strong enough. My point is: it is hard to see what is fraud and what isn't. If the ESA can't tell the difference, how can average parents?
msaharia 6y ago
EdTech in India is a predatory environment midwived by unscrupulous VCs. Please raise your against it if you can. And this is not an Indian problem. These companies are making their way to US and worldwide.
- flak48 6y ago
  Yep WhiteHat JR has started expanding to the Phillipines as well, where they're continuing their MO of targetting hapless parents and children with blatantly false advertising
infinityplus1 6y ago
Instead of refuting the claims with evidence, this company prefers to take down content which criticizes them. Clearly, they have no leg to stand on and have resorted to bullying.
- villgax 6y ago
  Exactly! If you look at their employee Twitter feeds, it is littered with under 18 kids who somehow have twitter accounts & are tweeting the same generic content linking back to their websites. Also questionable is internal slack screenshots being shared of harassing female interviewees, mass reporting critical tweets & other content across YT & LinkedIn.
- YokoZar 6y ago
  It seems like India would benefit from anti-SLAPP laws, as that's exactly what this company is doing. Something different would need to be done about the bad-faith takedowns and coordinated harassment, however.
Alterlife 6y ago
This is a lot worse than it looks. https://twitter.com/whiteHatSnr/status/1330455721897443329/photo/1 https://twitter.com/whiteHatSnr/status/1330455721897443329/p... Shame on Whitehatjr and on Byju's. This is outright fraud.
- shi314 6y ago
  Owned by Disney.
  - shi314 6y ago
    Apparently, Disney created a joint venture with Bjyu's for pre school kids.
- _Microft 6y ago
  Beside that: check out the ad on the right hand side of the screenshot. The keyboard ... ><
villgax 6y ago
Basically milking FOMO onto Parents, making kids build random apps & giving out visiting cards + auto-generated content.
IceWreck 6y ago
WhiteHatJr is a scam company and Facebook invested USD 300 million in their parent company, Byjus
- bavell 6y ago
  Haha how embarrassing! Imagine being tricked into paying $300M for a scam company that only knows how to defraud people.
Karupan 6y ago
EdTech in India is a huge mess. My mom was the principal of a high school for about 12 years and has first hand knowledge of the kind of overt corruption companies engage in to get a school contract signed. It is a huge and booming market and everyone wants to cash in through the shortest route possible - cheat and bribe.
villgax 6y ago
Imagine the Ti calculator monopoly but something similar for digital teaching if not kept in check.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  You mean duopoly with Casio ?
ffpip 6y ago
I feel scared for him. He has been constantly exposing more of this shitty company on reddit (r/india) WhiteHatJr's ads are complete BS. They advertise that a 9 year old kid (wolf gupta, yes that is apparently his real name) got a job at Google
- sokoloff 6y ago
  It seems odd for a company to publicly accuse Google of exploiting 9-year-olds in India in their advertising.
  - villgax 6y ago
    They made it out to make believe that kid got a job at google, somehow.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      I understand. That’s isomorphic with accusing Google of employing a 9-year-old, which might suggest a path to investigate with the aim of getting Google to issue an admittance or a categorical denial of this outlandish claim.
      - mealkh 6y ago
        I am a fan of this approach. One should get Google involved, they would probably make very clear that it's all made-up.
        whiteHatForWhat 6y ago
        Yup, that sounds solid?
- ankit219 6y ago
  It's gonna get worse. Criminal Defamation laws in India put the onus on the defendant (Poonia, dont know legal terms) to show that he did not defame the company, or to show that he did it in interest of public good. They are skewed towards the company or the person alleging defamation. In other countries its the person alleging that needs to prove that he was defamed unfairly.
blackoil 6y ago
WhiteHat Jr is one of the worst startups in India, there product is pure crap, employees are equally stressed with outrageous targets. Unfortunately any dissent is limited to social media as Indian media will peddle whatever the advertisers/government want them to say.
- villgax 6y ago
  Yeah, I used to live in a shared accommodation with many of their newly hired Civil Engineers for sales/business development roles. They had to close a family at the end of the day as part of their target, usually in the same neighbourhood. All of them got fed up & left en-masse in a few months.
h43k3r 6y ago
https://www.forbesindia.com/article/take-one-big-story-of-the-day/whitehat-jr-and-the-curious-case-of-disappearing-dissent/63627/1 https://www.forbesindia.com/article/take-one-big-story-of-th... A good writeup by Forbes. Big ad companies and media houses need to put pressure against false advertisement. I have not seen a single article by any indian newspaper on this topic. Offtopic-I would like this to blow up disproportionately because the only way whitehatjr is gonna backoff is because of a media backlash
- villgax 6y ago
  Yeah all those media houses frequently had prime time spots & full page ads from the parent company so any actual journalism is not going to appear.
- saimiam 6y ago
  I think WhiteHatJr was asked by the indian advertising self-regulation body to take down five misleading ads. https://thetechportal.com/2020/10/28/byjus-owned-whitehat-jr-asked-to-take-down-misleading-ads-pushing-kids-to-learn-coding/ https://thetechportal.com/2020/10/28/byjus-owned-whitehat-jr...
merricksb 6y ago
This seems like the most complete/current report on the topic: https://inc42.com/buzz/whitehat-jrs-ceo-files-2-6-mn-defamation-suit-against-software-engineer-pradeep-poonia/ https://inc42.com/buzz/whitehat-jrs-ceo-files-2-6-mn-defamat... Anyone know of anything better?
- villgax 6y ago
  Bit old but relevant https://www.forbesindia.com/article/take-one-big-story-of-the-day/whitehat-jr-and-the-curious-case-of-disappearing-dissent/63627/1 https://www.forbesindia.com/article/take-one-big-story-of-th...
- anotherNae 6y ago
  > WhiteHat Jr’s advertisements concerning an imaginary child “Wolf Gupta”, a teen who landed a job in Google Lawyers of HN, does this not backfire in legal settings for false advertising? They are literally accepting lying
techie128 6y ago
Their claims are absolutely false as witnessed by the numerous Slack screenshots. When I first came across their ads, I dismissed them as scammy and even reported a few. Scams are common place everywhere but they're particularly vicious in India because parents will fork over their life savings for securing their child's future. If there is actual an actual court case against WhiteHat Jr, they will likely tone down their scammy ads and might get slapped with a bit of fine and life will go on.
- villgax 6y ago
  The problem is wider with such startups using money to copyright strike or takedown critical content. They abused Content ID to take down valid & legal use of copyrighted content in reviews as well.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
bavell 6y ago
So typical that all the social media platforms are complicit in their little scheme. All of them are happy to silence this guy who is pointing out blatant fraud and corruption without a second thought. Broken copyright system once again a major player. Why do we allow these massively profitable companies get away with this crap?
- the_lucifer 6y ago
  Yup, they've literally weaponized DMCA for this and it's appalling.
troysk 6y ago
A company which didn't innovate their product and used MIT's Scratch. Couldn't even innovate on their name/brand and used Scratch Jr's branding is using copyright notices to stop the truth. Normal 2020 for India.
damnencryption 6y ago
Here are the investors in the parent company, byjus: https://byjus.com/our-investors/ https://byjus.com/our-investors/ Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Tencent, Sequoia Capital India, Sofina, Verlinvest, Owl Ventures, Naspers Ventures and others.
- _4570 6y ago
  I find it interesting they're all turning a blind eye to very obvious problematic behaviour!
  - tsjq 6y ago
    FB gets ad money from these frauds
- sg47 6y ago
  This is in line with how Facebook behaves and operates i.e. lack of ethics.
hudixt 6y ago
What is WhiteHat JR? It teaches coding to kids of age 6 charging upto 1500$ for 100 clases. To sum up, this is very high amount from any standar, parents take loan to fund this. Second, they use black hat marketing tactics claiming 10year old student now earns million of dollars. I'm not sure if there tactics are even legal. Platforms like FB, Google should fact-check on ads. Seriously how can you believe a kid is earning 10mn$ a year. And has no mention anywhere on the web.
- flak48 6y ago
  And they are charging $1500 just to read out scripts along with freely available code.org tutorials
- shi314 6y ago
  I know a 12yo Indian kid who is maintaining Ubuntu Unity. Though, I am pretty sure he didn't study at WhiteHatJr.
  - kkarakk 6y ago
    unless you're posting names/social media handles i'm guessing you're a whitehat jr employee. i pre-emptively apologise, don't sue me.
    - segfaultbuserr 6y ago
      The original post reads "he didn't study at WhiteHatJr". I think it was a satire, as I found it was a pretty funny remark. I believe you are pointing your finger at the wrong person.
      - kkarakk 6y ago
        actually i was just continuing the satire but it didn't come across as such :) que sera sera
        segfaultbuserr 6y ago
2Gkashmiri 6y ago
Khan academy is a wonderful resource and for free. People falling for this utter bullshit is directly attributable to one word. Marketting.
- villgax 6y ago
  Khan Academy is a golden standard, which these guys can't ever aspire to become.
  - 2Gkashmiri 6y ago
    no. they dont even try. i heard recently that byjus had "done a promotion" at a relative kids' school last year and the only reason they didnt go for it is because his father is not exactly weathly. the same bs. asking children over the top questions then showing them pretty animations and promising the stars. this whitehat is another level of disgusting. i have relatives who i have been slowly teaching scratch, arduino, even a 3 year old who does gcompris and they can now use a computer. will that give them a job? absolutely not. will it help them get a tiny bit interested in computers? yes most definitely.
- AkshitGarg 6y ago
  There are a lot of quality resources, be free or paid. Falling for this utter scam is beyond my mind
  - 2Gkashmiri 6y ago
    there can be paid alternatives taught by actual harvard professors but the genius of khan academy is that its the very best in education, anywhere in the world at a staggering cost of zero. no paid offering can beat that
_pythonlover_ 6y ago
Another article on WhitehatJr https://themorningcontext.com/indias-whitehatjr-is-startup-hell/ https://themorningcontext.com/indias-whitehatjr-is-startup-h... (behind paywall)
- kobiguru 6y ago
  Not paywalled. you have to make an account though.
essdas 6y ago
The truth is much worse than this suggests: This recent article in The Morning Context gives a lot more detail as to why this company is absolutely unethical: https://themorningcontext.com/indias-whitehatjr-is-startup-hell/ https://themorningcontext.com/indias-whitehatjr-is-startup-h... [Requires sign in to read unfortunately] WhiteHat Jr. is the sleaziest company to emerge from India's start-up ecosystem. They have used underhanded and unethical means to take down fair criticism online. They have used misleading and outright false advertising to sell their product to parents. I can only hope that people wake up to how evil this company is.
- _4570 6y ago
  That article is terrifying!
- flak48 6y ago
  The apparent success that WhiteHat enjoyed with a $300 million exit within 18 months of founding has unfortunately inspired the current generation of entrepreneurs in India to also try their hands in the edtech space over everything else. Most of them however don't know the scale of the fraud and unimaginably shady marketing and operating practices WhiteHat engaged in to reach that valuation.
_pythonlover_ 6y ago
Recent post by the Pradeep Poonia showing proof how fake their ads are. There is a slack screenshot posted where the employees (including their CEO) talking about creating a fake app that they advertise as an app made by a 13 yo kid. https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/jyt7et/whitehatjr_filed_a_20_crore_defamation_case/ https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/jyt7et/whitehatjr_fi...
- villgax 6y ago
  Sheer disgrace
- boruto 6y ago
  I hope I can comment there, that I can donate. I somehow am blocked in that subreddit.
dang 6y ago
Url changed from https://nextbigwhat.com/whitehatjr-files-20-cr-defamation-case-against-pradeep-poonia/ https://nextbigwhat.com/whitehatjr-files-20-cr-defamation-ca..., which points to this.
- chrismorgan 6y ago
  I think you may have made a mistake here. The URL is currently https://www.forbesindia.com/article/take-one-big-story-of-the-day/whitehat-jr-and-the-curious-case-of-disappearing-dissent/63627/1 https://www.forbesindia.com/article/take-one-big-story-of-th..., which is an article from a month ago (and was discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24867212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24867212) that shares some subject matter with the original article here, but has nothing about the lawsuit, which is fresh, so that the title on this post now has very limited connection to the Forbes article being linked to. Perhaps change it back, or to https://twitter.com/whiteHatSnr/status/1330202709203578882 https://twitter.com/whiteHatSnr/status/1330202709203578882 which is what that nextbigwhat.com page does point to?
  - dang 6y ago
    Ok, I've done that. Thanks!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
pulkitsh1234 6y ago
I have had my personal stint with trying to "expose" an Indian startup (I am an Indian), also coding related which gained some traction on LinkedIn (around 500+ reactions, if they mean anything). This guy is in serious danger, trust me. I had to delete my linkedin post when my ex-manager called me to delete it otherwise the startup's employees will go crazy and try every which way to make my life hell. Unfortunately, thats what you get in living in this country and trying to voice your opinion (without any strong political and financial credentials). I have mentioned this earlier, people keep complaining of "brain drain" here in India as tech graduates keep leaving India for opportunities abroad; I thought I won't be that one and will do something for the country; it's just too difficult, I have add enough, I can't wait to leave. I always tell people to just be anonymous, having your personal identity linked when saying anything remotely offensive is just an open invitation for personal attacks and things like this.
- eklavya 6y ago
  I am sorry you had this experience but bad news, no place is safe from retaliatory litigation. Best of luck for your journey abroad.
  - throwaway3699 6y ago
    I think the US would qualify, no? You can't be sued for telling the truth.
    - ISL 6y ago
      You can be sued for anything. The plaintiff may not win, it might get dismissed immediately, but they can always file suit.
    - nikanj 6y ago
      Read the Theranos book (Bad Blood), you very much can be sued for exposing scams
- saimiam 6y ago
  I'm sorry that this happened to you but now that it has happened to you and to this guy, I looking forward to the day when one or both of these two things happens: 1. anonymous whistleblowing/exposes of shady business practices becomes a thing 2. hedgefunds like muddy waters emerge in India whose goal is to find rotten companies and profit off them through short selling Hope it rains creative destruction on such companies.
fareesh 6y ago
Pathetic. All this dude did was show users their fake ads and fake reviews. He's also showcased reviews where the instructors don't seem to know much about how the internet works. Now the legal system is being used to maliciously prosecute him. There is little hope for this man in India given the level of corruption and rot in the system. If there are well connected folks in the west who want to spend their time on actual injustice as opposed to casting in Hollywood movies and other first world problems, I'd invite them to speak up for this man and contact the investors / folks at Disney and other Byju's investors. Also if you know folks at Reddit or YouTube congratulate them on having such a trash tier DMCA review process where a decent man with the intention of protecting a gullible population of poor folks can't stand up to a scam corporation backed by a mammoth like Disney, on your platform.
- swiley 6y ago
  This is exactly why so many people freak out about: 1) YouTube being the only place people go to watch videos online 2) These awful DMCA takedown processes.
  - fareesh 6y ago
    Big tech has basically monopolized all the attention and all the talent. Some of the smartest people of our time are working on ad delivery platforms, aka propaganda machines. Not only that, in this case it looks like a big advertiser can just call a senior exec at YouTube and yell at him and magically a channel that's critical of the advertiser will vanish. I'd be very surprised if I'm wrong.
- paledot 6y ago
  Rarely am I the one to stand up for Google, but the DMCA is such a garbage law that they have no choice. They don't have the legal ability to call bullshit on the takedown. It's the video creator's job under the DMCA to prove themselves innocent, under penalty of perjury. (No such penalty exists for filing a false claim, BTW.)
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
pionerkotik 6y ago
I hope these WhiteHat Jr fellas get hit hard by the Streisand effect.
- villgax 6y ago
  Yeah hopefully parents glance at news articles & think real hard before forking over $2000/yr
gogopuppygogo 6y ago
Josh Fluke has been going after shady tech companies in his videos. He has really gotten under the skin of an Indian tech CEO: https://youtu.be/w0GhoiLS8Dc https://youtu.be/w0GhoiLS8Dc
kumarvvr 6y ago
I hope WhiteHatJr just up and dies. They are a terrible company, manipulative and taking advantage of clueless parents.
bsenftner 6y ago
Why not hit their Twitter account and say they are spamming with malicious web sites: their own.
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.is/mpo2Q https://archive.is/mpo2Q
kkarakk 6y ago
Indian twitter is full of people arguing with edtech company employees. they're a really trigger happy litigative bunch. you HAVE to bow down coz the lawyer fees will quite literally beggar you esp since court cases are dragged on forever in india...
chrismorgan 6y ago
Current title on HN: Indian Startup WhiteHatJr files suit against reviewer exposing fake ads Title on article: WhiteHat Jr and the curious case of disappearing dissent Actual subject matter: an entity abusing YouTube’s copyright systems to suppress negative comments on their advertisements (giving examples of one case of fun mockery and one finding inconsistencies in allegations made by the ads), and YouTube handling things typically badly. I see no mention whatsoever of WhiteHat Jr filing suit, and the article is much more about the abuse of the Content ID system and copyright law than about whether the ads make illegitimate claims (though it’s certainly not painting WhiteHat Jr in a favourable light even apart from their attempts at suppression of dissent).
- shmde 6y ago
  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BQKOGKnryhK2GLrZJIWoEkAnQx0K768f/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BQKOGKnryhK2GLrZJIWoEkAnQx0.... Kindly read this.
  - chrismorgan 6y ago
    Not reading that now, but its filename “Karan Bajaj & Anr. Vs. Pradeep Poonia (1).pdf” suggests it may be lawsuit documents. But I still see no mention of a lawsuit in the article; unless there is, the title here should not mention anything about filing suit (quite apart from the HN rule of not editorialising titles, but using the site’s provided title unless there’s a good reason not to).
    - ashleshbiradar 6y ago
      https://readhacker.news/s/4zn9y https://readhacker.news/s/4zn9y this was the original link
- sxt 6y ago
  That's because this news is as fresh as it gets. The details of the suit were just released a few hours ago, and for the sake of international media recognition OP selected the most prominent article with a title reflecting the current scenario. I've been following this saga for a while, it's all on Reddit. Here's a summary, the guy started off by creating a YT channel a few months back called "WhitehatSr" where he documented what actually happens in these classes and showed that the 'teachers' literally have no idea what they're talking about. They're literally throwing around buzzwords whilst pressuring the child to pay for the full course to learn advanced concepts. The videos were posted to reddit, and soon the reddit accounts got taken down by the admin.(Not mods) Soon his twitters too, only his original remained, and so he began posting under his real name. The guy persisted and created more Reddit accounts and continued to post till his videos got taken down on YT. I think after creating a bit of noise and being picked up by a few minor publications, the videos were reinstated, but any other person that posted videos exposing the same had their YT taken down. At this point he was posting on LinkedIN too, and around this time he got a barrage of messages from WhiteHatJr employees, one of them claiming to file a sexual assualt case against him if he does not back down. He ignored them for a while and finally called them out, after which they did briefly stop, but soon after his LinkedIN got taken down. He said in one of his posts, that a lot of editorials would reach out to him and collect information but never end up publishing, almost as if their was a driving force stopping them from it. He soon began to get death threats to him and his family which were deleted within seconds, but he managed to capture evidence. They were from anon accounts but they made it pretty clear where they're from His most recent big development was screenshots from their Slack channels, which clearly showed their so called students with laurels don't exist, and one of them even show their CEO saying something along "We have to make the app on behalf of the student" and one of the employees says he'll get it it done. Shortly after this, a rupees 200 million lawsuit was filed against this guy for "defamation". He hasn't decided what to do I hope this gives an idea what kind of scum this 300mn USD valued "edu startup" is, whose primary targets are parents from middle and lower income households who can be enticed with a few programming jargon and images of Sundar Pichai. I'm sorry for the improper phrasing and structure, I tried to jot down what I could recollect.
shmde 6y ago
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BQKOGKnryhK2GLrZJIWoEkAnQx0K768f/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BQKOGKnryhK2GLrZJIWoEkAnQx0.... The complete suit.
ghoomketu 6y ago
This is nothing new. Another scammer called Ankit Fadia has been doing very similar stuff under the name of "Ethical hacking courses" for many many years now. He has been exposed many times (see his Wikipedia page) but most parents and students don't know much about the person running the business and fall for stupid ploys like "Employed by FBI to hack Osama" or some paid TV apperance and end up paying thousands of dollars to such companies / individuals.
- gadnuk 6y ago
  Thanks for mentioning this fraudster. That dude legit conned everybody at the time because Internet was fairly new to India. Here's one of my favorite pages on the internet exposing the charlatan that he is: http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/ankit_fadia/ http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/ankit_fadia/
- DarmokJalad1701 6y ago
  Yea. I remember when I got interested in computers as a teen, I used to think he was some hacker genius after coming across his website ( https://web.archive.org/web/20020802033500/http://hackingtruths.box.sk/ https://web.archive.org/web/20020802033500/http://hackingtru... ). I remember getting one of his books on "Ethical Hacking" and found it completely pointless.
  - yp19 6y ago
    I took his course man, that too in person. Pointless is too much a nice word to describe that f@$#
blueblisters 6y ago
Looks like they made the classic Streisand effect mistake - attempts to clamp down on critical voices brought more attention to them. For a startup that ramped up and exited so quickly, they don't seem particularly smart. Notwithstanding the marketing, I don't think the product itself is egregious. Their primary sell is teaching logic ("coding") to kids through 1:1 tutoring sessions. Many Indian upper/middle class households already send their kids to in-person tutors at a very young age, and looks like Whitehat Jr found a niche that could cater to that market during the pandemic. 1:1 tutoring can be highly effective, creating a 2-sigma improvement in student performance (http://web.mit.edu/5.95/readings/bloom-two-sigma.pdf http://web.mit.edu/5.95/readings/bloom-two-sigma.pdf). Of course, Whitehat Jr likely doesn't follow specific structured pedagogy to get this advantage, and maybe the target age group is too young to get any benefits.
- shmde 6y ago
  > Their primary sell is teaching logic. No their primary sell is to instruct things one by one by reading a literal script. They literally have a standardized script to read to the kids. Things like drag and drop icons and stuff on an already open source website code.org. They do not teach anything. They just tell the kid what to do and make them feel that its done by them. >1:1 tutoring can be highly effective, creating a 2 sigma improvement. Agreed, they do, but not when majority of teachers they recruit don't even need to know coding to teach coding. Some teachers are literally housewives trying to make an income during this pandemic teaching coding without knowing anything remotely related to computers. I don't think circumstances like these will create a 2-sigma improvements in students. ;)
soumyadeb 6y ago
Founders, hiring managers in this group can play a big role in stopping this fraud. Maybe we should publicly call out WhieHat Jr in our job postings? A single statement like "A degree from WhiteJat Jr. won't impact your chances of getting hired" can go a long way.
- villgax 6y ago
  Yep, simple steps like this would ensure children & parents don't buy into this false sense of securing someone's future with some random course.
tsjq 6y ago
Byjus, the parent company , has some huge influx of investments from FaceBook
tgkprog 6y ago
Hey Poonia, I do hope that you start a fund and hire the best lawyer(s) possible. Will contribute what i can, and again after a few months if it drags on. good luck. am sure many others here will too
- villgax 6y ago
  He posted on r/India a while back. Many have offered to contribute & help out. https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/jyt7et/whitehatjr_filed_a_20_crore_defamation_case/ https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/jyt7et/whitehatjr_fi...
Dhruvrnaik 6y ago
Hope more and more people in and outside India become aware of this scam.
rainingcatndogs 6y ago
Their videos got removed from LBRY as well: https://old.reddit.com/r/india/comments/jsuows/all_my_videos_from_lbry_also_got_removed_so/ https://old.reddit.com/r/india/comments/jsuows/all_my_videos... I had no surprise when I heard youtube suspended him. But I'm very dissapointed that a platform like LBRY, marketing itself as a censorship-resistant youtube alternative(https://lbry.com/faq/censorship-resistance https://lbry.com/faq/censorship-resistance) deleted a whole bunch of videos which were clearly fair use and for public good.
- avadhesh18 6y ago
  I still can't figure out how they got lbry to remove the videos.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    They just DMCA'd them. Lbry then changed the listing. You can go get everything from the blockchain if you put in the work. They just made it so you have to put in the work. This is usually the case with most of these censorship resistant things. They have to comply with the law so they can never live up to the dream.
    - jiggytom 6y ago
      That is correct, we got a valid looking DMCA that was later disputed by the channel owner. It was unblocked. Then today, he deleted the channel and I haven't heard from him otherwise, so I'm not sure what's up.
      - rishav_sharan 6y ago
        Maybe he got frustrated with even LBRY being DMCAed. I know I would.
      - rainingcatndogs 6y ago
        When was the channel unblocked? It is disheartening to know that a company was able to silence legitimate criticism on all major platforms and even on places like LBRY.
LabyRinth123 6y ago
https://i.imgur.com/NIFvQeE.png https://i.imgur.com/NIFvQeE.png Here is a screenshot of the company's job posting
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
kcsomisetty 6y ago
i would have wished them death, but since this being my traceable identity, i dont.
2Gkashmiri 6y ago
if push comes to shove, i will contribute for this guys legal defense. who else is in?
- villgax 6y ago
  r/India & me too
  - 2Gkashmiri 6y ago
    I am not one for activism. See my name for clues but this guy is doing an honorable job. If i want to call someone a hero, this guy would be it.
dang 6y ago
All: https://www.forbesindia.com/article/take-one-big-story-of-the-day/whitehat-jr-and-the-curious-case-of-disappearing-dissent/63627/1 https://www.forbesindia.com/article/take-one-big-story-of-th... is a bit older and has more background. There was also a smaller thread about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24867212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24867212 (Submitted URL was https://nextbigwhat.com/whitehatjr-files-20-cr-defamation-case-against-pradeep-poonia/ https://nextbigwhat.com/whitehatjr-files-20-cr-defamation-ca... but it contains no extra info. More explanation at bottom of this page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25176990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25176990.)
- ashleshbiradar 6y ago
  https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/22/whitehat-jrs-founder-files-2-6m-defamation-suit-against-critic/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/22/whitehat-jrs-founder-files...
  - dang 6y ago
    That looks more informative so we'll switch to it from https://twitter.com/whiteHatSnr/status/1330202709203578882 https://twitter.com/whiteHatSnr/status/1330202709203578882. Thanks!
blaintiff 6y ago
> As some of the one-on-one communications between the Plaintiffs’ teachers and the Defendant have demonstrated, the former have felt extremely threatened and harassed by the Defendant which is even more pertinent given that the Plaintiffs’ entire workforce of 11,000 teachers is female Weird.
dfrtgaswiokhtbz 6y ago
hi
minusSeven 6y ago
I am surprised how post like these hasn't got viral yet and how Streisand effect hasn't taken place yet. I thought social media and media as such would have taken it immediately.
sipulal 6y ago
The guy who is campaigning against WhiteHat Jr is struggling and being bashed. It's sad that with so much education available for free, parents are falling for this scam
uday11 6y ago
All the reviews on Google app & iOS app store on whitehatjr are FAKE.
srbsa 6y ago
The issue could be a matter of outrage, though, here in India the FOMO by parents (and students) is rather structural - been on since forever whether it is likes of Aptech/NIIT since late 90s. Here are some pointers: High-school science grds that seek STEM undergrad education in India is over 5-million annually. Commerce & Humanities is looked down upon as barely has any value in terms career prospects (Some top high-schools don't even offer Humanities). For STEM subjects, over 5-million aspirants compete for less than 100K 'meaningful' seats - cuthroat yet? FOMO in the failed education system is structural. Else to blame companies from byjus, to unacademy, to upgrad, all of which claim to deliver on "Career Changing Education" at high-markups, is lame!
blackhatjr 6y ago
The employees are forced to adopt unethical tactics to meet the aggressive business targets
blackhatjr 6y ago
The sales employees in the company are coerced to adopt unethical practices to meet the aggressive sales target.
baali 6y ago
Twitter thread of arguments being made by the involved parties in the court: https://twitter.com/LiveLawIndia/status/1330743096531795969 https://twitter.com/LiveLawIndia/status/1330743096531795969
- villgax 6y ago
  Thanks!
lubna1210 6y ago
I had reached out to white hat junior as a volunteer to teach kids and share the knowledge I acquired through my education and work experience. I explicitly mentioned to them that I'm not looking for a salary. I have a stable job and free time to help upskill children who cannot afford a fee. A little background : I used to teach in India (for about 8 years along with my core job) but having moved to a new country, commuting became a little difficult and I gave it up. With an online platform such as white hat jr., I thought this would be really convenient for me and helpful for children. And here is how they responded : only if you commit to 30 hours a week, can we onboard you because other teachers are competing.. This was obviously not possible for me, as I already have a job. My argument was - I am an experienced teacher, with 9+ years in the IT industry. And I don't even want money for my services, just be flexible to maybe 15-20 hours a week. This kept going on for a while, and then I realized that their cause is not to educate but make money. So I gave up.
- TMisra 6y ago
  Are you now teaching in any form online?Would like to know .
  - lubna1210 6y ago
    Not at the moment.
- villgax 6y ago
  One aspect of their hiring seems to be just hiring housewives who want to have a side job, which allows the company to keep paying low & also to brag about the same whilst undermining actual experience or knowledge about the courses. Which was exposed by parents & the reviewer by the quality of classes, not to mention laughable tweets of the children putting up some random app on the app stores.
extrapao 6y ago
The court has now barred him from speaking. And WhiteHat has sued another guy. Found this publication is covering the cases -- INC42 Second lawsuit against another critic: https://inc42.com/buzz/after-poonia-whitehat-jr-files-1-9-mn-suit-against-angel-investor-aniruddha-malpani/ https://inc42.com/buzz/after-poonia-whitehat-jr-files-1-9-mn... Court bars critic from talking about WhiteHat in first lawsuit: https://inc42.com/buzz/breaking-whitehat-jr-vs-poonia-hc-restrains-poonia-from-commenting-told-to-take-down-posts/ https://inc42.com/buzz/breaking-whitehat-jr-vs-poonia-hc-res... This is just ridiculous.
- villgax 6y ago
  The way in which everyone has overlooked the abuse of Copyright Flagging System & silencing criticism is just appalling, don't even get me started on the imaginary kid they posted in their Ads. Lol they claim hacking of slack conversations which in fact is something their internal employees have shared to blow the lid on their fake claims of kids making apps & doing 'coding'.
T3RMINATED 6y ago
WhiteHat Jr is a SCAM... do not use it!
pravin82 6y ago
the rate at which WhiteHatjr is lying, very soon they will declare wolf gupta to be satoshi nakamoto
bobbydreamer 6y ago
My colleague is byju customer and he got byju for his son because all his apartment people do it for their kids, it sort of showed responsible parents. It costed him a Rs.70k. He is well off so it's fine for him. It's just a online tution centre, that's it backed by pretty powerful people to make money during a IPO. What happens after IPO is another story, look at SChand IPO was Rs.700 now it's at Rs.70. Now they have to tie up with college or govt to give undergraduate certificates and hook some companies for employment already most colleges do that. School or college experience is gone. I won't call it scam, it just sent out of hand. What happens when Nobel person meets VCs.
bigfoot99 6y ago
Can someone please record this somewhere before it’s taken down permanently: https://themorningcontext.com/internet/indias-whitehatjr-is-startup-hell https://themorningcontext.com/internet/indias-whitehatjr-is-...

691 points by villgax 6y ago

ap46 6y ago

Nice going, nothing like shutting voices whilst being an education startup geared at teaching kids to code

pja 6y ago

This site is doing nothing but embedding the original Tweet: https://twitter.com/whiteHatSnr/status/1330202709203578882 https://twitter.com/whiteHatSnr/status/1330202709203578882

villgax 6y ago
https://www.forbesindia.com/article/take-one-big-story-of-the-day/whitehat-jr-and-the-curious-case-of-disappearing-dissent/63627/1 https://www.forbesindia.com/article/take-one-big-story-of-th...

bzb6 6y ago

In a place as corrupt as India it’s likely they’ll win.

villgax 6y ago
Yeah they got acquired by Byju's(Disney collaboration) for $300mn, so their PR/Legal team has no bounds.
mangamadaiyan 6y ago
I'd love for them to lose, but unfortunately reality leans in the direction you've indicated.
shi314 6y ago
Even Gambling has become legalised in courts by these StartUps and VCs.

tempstar 6y ago

They are the biggest scam in India capitalizing on FOMO of Indian parents. They charge heaftily (more than $2000) to teach app development (using Scratch, Firebase etc.). Their staff is poorly paid and just reads off scripts. Their staff doesn't know even the basics of CS (as evidenced in this video: https://youtu.be/1Y21eSn_zSM?t=64 https://youtu.be/1Y21eSn_zSM?t=64, when the student asks how files are stored in Cloud Storage, she says the files are stored in real clouds. There's another where the teacher can't tell the difference between Java and Javascript) Their ads are highly misleading and straight up false with made up names of students who earned millions of dollars in salary while their fellow peers are playing Cricket. (https://in.news.yahoo.com/wolf-gupta-byju-whitehat-jr-090945630.html https://in.news.yahoo.com/wolf-gupta-byju-whitehat-jr-090945...). You can imagine the effect this will have parents (especially in India where parents are known be super competitive). This guy, Pradeep Poonia, has been actively campaigning against them. His youtube channels were taken down, Quora account was taken down, Twitter, even Reddit (if i'm not wrong). His current youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdv4_YNXrIQtGHSVXnY-1mg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdv4_YNXrIQtGHSVXnY-1mg) has lot of videos on this. He especially has a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN1DOE7GoYw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN1DOE7GoYw) where he accessed their internal slack (shady I know, but even Whitehat Jr is also not playing fair) and showed their organized effort into suppressing online dissent by fake twitter accounts, trolling etc. WhiteHatJr was recently acquired by another firm Byju's (whose CEO is the plaintiff in this lawsuit) that also does the same thing, but for entire school curriculum. In a world, where there is Khan Academy, they sell their subpar product at a very high price, exploiting Indian parents' ignorance and willingness to do anything for their kids education.

timkam 6y ago
Interesting. This reminds me of the story of Siraj Raval, a formerly highly influential YouTuber on machine learning and blockchain topics: https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2019/10/16/why-siraj-ravals-plagiarism-is-the-future-of-plagiarism/ https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2019/10/16/why-siraj-ravals-... Some years ago, when I started getting into machine learning, I couldn't tell he is a fraud. Considering that just before he was broadly exposed as a fraudster, he was invited by the European Space Agency (ESA) to give a talk, I was in good company. I think the only reason he got exposed is because he started making stupidly bold claims, attributing high-profile original research to himself. If it weren't for this, he would probably still be accepted by the mainstream because the case a few experts could make against him wouldn't be strong enough. My point is: it is hard to see what is fraud and what isn't. If the ESA can't tell the difference, how can average parents?

msaharia 6y ago

EdTech in India is a predatory environment midwived by unscrupulous VCs. Please raise your against it if you can. And this is not an Indian problem. These companies are making their way to US and worldwide.

flak48 6y ago
Yep WhiteHat JR has started expanding to the Phillipines as well, where they're continuing their MO of targetting hapless parents and children with blatantly false advertising

infinityplus1 6y ago

Instead of refuting the claims with evidence, this company prefers to take down content which criticizes them. Clearly, they have no leg to stand on and have resorted to bullying.

villgax 6y ago
Exactly! If you look at their employee Twitter feeds, it is littered with under 18 kids who somehow have twitter accounts & are tweeting the same generic content linking back to their websites. Also questionable is internal slack screenshots being shared of harassing female interviewees, mass reporting critical tweets & other content across YT & LinkedIn.
YokoZar 6y ago
It seems like India would benefit from anti-SLAPP laws, as that's exactly what this company is doing. Something different would need to be done about the bad-faith takedowns and coordinated harassment, however.

Alterlife 6y ago

This is a lot worse than it looks. https://twitter.com/whiteHatSnr/status/1330455721897443329/photo/1 https://twitter.com/whiteHatSnr/status/1330455721897443329/p... Shame on Whitehatjr and on Byju's. This is outright fraud.

shi314 6y ago
Owned by Disney.
- shi314 6y ago
  Apparently, Disney created a joint venture with Bjyu's for pre school kids.
_Microft 6y ago
Beside that: check out the ad on the right hand side of the screenshot. The keyboard ... ><

villgax 6y ago

Basically milking FOMO onto Parents, making kids build random apps & giving out visiting cards + auto-generated content.

IceWreck 6y ago

WhiteHatJr is a scam company and Facebook invested USD 300 million in their parent company, Byjus

bavell 6y ago
Haha how embarrassing! Imagine being tricked into paying $300M for a scam company that only knows how to defraud people.

Karupan 6y ago

EdTech in India is a huge mess. My mom was the principal of a high school for about 12 years and has first hand knowledge of the kind of overt corruption companies engage in to get a school contract signed. It is a huge and booming market and everyone wants to cash in through the shortest route possible - cheat and bribe.

villgax 6y ago

Imagine the Ti calculator monopoly but something similar for digital teaching if not kept in check.

BlueTemplar 6y ago
You mean duopoly with Casio ?

ffpip 6y ago

I feel scared for him. He has been constantly exposing more of this shitty company on reddit (r/india) WhiteHatJr's ads are complete BS. They advertise that a 9 year old kid (wolf gupta, yes that is apparently his real name) got a job at Google

sokoloff 6y ago
It seems odd for a company to publicly accuse Google of exploiting 9-year-olds in India in their advertising.
- villgax 6y ago
  They made it out to make believe that kid got a job at google, somehow.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    I understand. That’s isomorphic with accusing Google of employing a 9-year-old, which might suggest a path to investigate with the aim of getting Google to issue an admittance or a categorical denial of this outlandish claim.
    - mealkh 6y ago
      I am a fan of this approach. One should get Google involved, they would probably make very clear that it's all made-up.
      - whiteHatForWhat 6y ago
        Yup, that sounds solid?
ankit219 6y ago
It's gonna get worse. Criminal Defamation laws in India put the onus on the defendant (Poonia, dont know legal terms) to show that he did not defame the company, or to show that he did it in interest of public good. They are skewed towards the company or the person alleging defamation. In other countries its the person alleging that needs to prove that he was defamed unfairly.

blackoil 6y ago

WhiteHat Jr is one of the worst startups in India, there product is pure crap, employees are equally stressed with outrageous targets. Unfortunately any dissent is limited to social media as Indian media will peddle whatever the advertisers/government want them to say.

villgax 6y ago
Yeah, I used to live in a shared accommodation with many of their newly hired Civil Engineers for sales/business development roles. They had to close a family at the end of the day as part of their target, usually in the same neighbourhood. All of them got fed up & left en-masse in a few months.

h43k3r 6y ago

https://www.forbesindia.com/article/take-one-big-story-of-the-day/whitehat-jr-and-the-curious-case-of-disappearing-dissent/63627/1 https://www.forbesindia.com/article/take-one-big-story-of-th... A good writeup by Forbes. Big ad companies and media houses need to put pressure against false advertisement. I have not seen a single article by any indian newspaper on this topic. Offtopic-I would like this to blow up disproportionately because the only way whitehatjr is gonna backoff is because of a media backlash

villgax 6y ago
Yeah all those media houses frequently had prime time spots & full page ads from the parent company so any actual journalism is not going to appear.
saimiam 6y ago
I think WhiteHatJr was asked by the indian advertising self-regulation body to take down five misleading ads. https://thetechportal.com/2020/10/28/byjus-owned-whitehat-jr-asked-to-take-down-misleading-ads-pushing-kids-to-learn-coding/ https://thetechportal.com/2020/10/28/byjus-owned-whitehat-jr...

merricksb 6y ago

This seems like the most complete/current report on the topic: https://inc42.com/buzz/whitehat-jrs-ceo-files-2-6-mn-defamation-suit-against-software-engineer-pradeep-poonia/ https://inc42.com/buzz/whitehat-jrs-ceo-files-2-6-mn-defamat... Anyone know of anything better?

villgax 6y ago
Bit old but relevant https://www.forbesindia.com/article/take-one-big-story-of-the-day/whitehat-jr-and-the-curious-case-of-disappearing-dissent/63627/1 https://www.forbesindia.com/article/take-one-big-story-of-th...
anotherNae 6y ago
> WhiteHat Jr’s advertisements concerning an imaginary child “Wolf Gupta”, a teen who landed a job in Google Lawyers of HN, does this not backfire in legal settings for false advertising? They are literally accepting lying

techie128 6y ago

Their claims are absolutely false as witnessed by the numerous Slack screenshots. When I first came across their ads, I dismissed them as scammy and even reported a few. Scams are common place everywhere but they're particularly vicious in India because parents will fork over their life savings for securing their child's future. If there is actual an actual court case against WhiteHat Jr, they will likely tone down their scammy ads and might get slapped with a bit of fine and life will go on.

villgax 6y ago
The problem is wider with such startups using money to copyright strike or takedown critical content. They abused Content ID to take down valid & legal use of copyrighted content in reviews as well.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

bavell 6y ago

So typical that all the social media platforms are complicit in their little scheme. All of them are happy to silence this guy who is pointing out blatant fraud and corruption without a second thought. Broken copyright system once again a major player. Why do we allow these massively profitable companies get away with this crap?

the_lucifer 6y ago
Yup, they've literally weaponized DMCA for this and it's appalling.

troysk 6y ago

A company which didn't innovate their product and used MIT's Scratch. Couldn't even innovate on their name/brand and used Scratch Jr's branding is using copyright notices to stop the truth. Normal 2020 for India.

damnencryption 6y ago

Here are the investors in the parent company, byjus: https://byjus.com/our-investors/ https://byjus.com/our-investors/ Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Tencent, Sequoia Capital India, Sofina, Verlinvest, Owl Ventures, Naspers Ventures and others.

_4570 6y ago
I find it interesting they're all turning a blind eye to very obvious problematic behaviour!
- tsjq 6y ago
  FB gets ad money from these frauds
sg47 6y ago
This is in line with how Facebook behaves and operates i.e. lack of ethics.

hudixt 6y ago

What is WhiteHat JR? It teaches coding to kids of age 6 charging upto 1500$ for 100 clases. To sum up, this is very high amount from any standar, parents take loan to fund this. Second, they use black hat marketing tactics claiming 10year old student now earns million of dollars. I'm not sure if there tactics are even legal. Platforms like FB, Google should fact-check on ads. Seriously how can you believe a kid is earning 10mn$ a year. And has no mention anywhere on the web.

flak48 6y ago
And they are charging $1500 just to read out scripts along with freely available code.org tutorials
shi314 6y ago
I know a 12yo Indian kid who is maintaining Ubuntu Unity. Though, I am pretty sure he didn't study at WhiteHatJr.
- kkarakk 6y ago
  unless you're posting names/social media handles i'm guessing you're a whitehat jr employee. i pre-emptively apologise, don't sue me.
  - segfaultbuserr 6y ago
    The original post reads "he didn't study at WhiteHatJr". I think it was a satire, as I found it was a pretty funny remark. I believe you are pointing your finger at the wrong person.
    - kkarakk 6y ago
      actually i was just continuing the satire but it didn't come across as such :) que sera sera
      - segfaultbuserr 6y ago

2Gkashmiri 6y ago

Khan academy is a wonderful resource and for free. People falling for this utter bullshit is directly attributable to one word. Marketting.

villgax 6y ago
Khan Academy is a golden standard, which these guys can't ever aspire to become.
- 2Gkashmiri 6y ago
  no. they dont even try. i heard recently that byjus had "done a promotion" at a relative kids' school last year and the only reason they didnt go for it is because his father is not exactly weathly. the same bs. asking children over the top questions then showing them pretty animations and promising the stars. this whitehat is another level of disgusting. i have relatives who i have been slowly teaching scratch, arduino, even a 3 year old who does gcompris and they can now use a computer. will that give them a job? absolutely not. will it help them get a tiny bit interested in computers? yes most definitely.
AkshitGarg 6y ago
There are a lot of quality resources, be free or paid. Falling for this utter scam is beyond my mind
- 2Gkashmiri 6y ago
  there can be paid alternatives taught by actual harvard professors but the genius of khan academy is that its the very best in education, anywhere in the world at a staggering cost of zero. no paid offering can beat that

_pythonlover_ 6y ago

Another article on WhitehatJr https://themorningcontext.com/indias-whitehatjr-is-startup-hell/ https://themorningcontext.com/indias-whitehatjr-is-startup-h... (behind paywall)

kobiguru 6y ago
Not paywalled. you have to make an account though.

essdas 6y ago

The truth is much worse than this suggests: This recent article in The Morning Context gives a lot more detail as to why this company is absolutely unethical: https://themorningcontext.com/indias-whitehatjr-is-startup-hell/ https://themorningcontext.com/indias-whitehatjr-is-startup-h... [Requires sign in to read unfortunately] WhiteHat Jr. is the sleaziest company to emerge from India's start-up ecosystem. They have used underhanded and unethical means to take down fair criticism online. They have used misleading and outright false advertising to sell their product to parents. I can only hope that people wake up to how evil this company is.

_4570 6y ago
That article is terrifying!
flak48 6y ago
The apparent success that WhiteHat enjoyed with a $300 million exit within 18 months of founding has unfortunately inspired the current generation of entrepreneurs in India to also try their hands in the edtech space over everything else. Most of them however don't know the scale of the fraud and unimaginably shady marketing and operating practices WhiteHat engaged in to reach that valuation.

_pythonlover_ 6y ago

Recent post by the Pradeep Poonia showing proof how fake their ads are. There is a slack screenshot posted where the employees (including their CEO) talking about creating a fake app that they advertise as an app made by a 13 yo kid. https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/jyt7et/whitehatjr_filed_a_20_crore_defamation_case/ https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/jyt7et/whitehatjr_fi...

villgax 6y ago
Sheer disgrace
boruto 6y ago
I hope I can comment there, that I can donate. I somehow am blocked in that subreddit.

dang 6y ago

Url changed from https://nextbigwhat.com/whitehatjr-files-20-cr-defamation-case-against-pradeep-poonia/ https://nextbigwhat.com/whitehatjr-files-20-cr-defamation-ca..., which points to this.

chrismorgan 6y ago
I think you may have made a mistake here. The URL is currently https://www.forbesindia.com/article/take-one-big-story-of-the-day/whitehat-jr-and-the-curious-case-of-disappearing-dissent/63627/1 https://www.forbesindia.com/article/take-one-big-story-of-th..., which is an article from a month ago (and was discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24867212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24867212) that shares some subject matter with the original article here, but has nothing about the lawsuit, which is fresh, so that the title on this post now has very limited connection to the Forbes article being linked to. Perhaps change it back, or to https://twitter.com/whiteHatSnr/status/1330202709203578882 https://twitter.com/whiteHatSnr/status/1330202709203578882 which is what that nextbigwhat.com page does point to?
- dang 6y ago
  Ok, I've done that. Thanks!

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

pulkitsh1234 6y ago

I have had my personal stint with trying to "expose" an Indian startup (I am an Indian), also coding related which gained some traction on LinkedIn (around 500+ reactions, if they mean anything). This guy is in serious danger, trust me. I had to delete my linkedin post when my ex-manager called me to delete it otherwise the startup's employees will go crazy and try every which way to make my life hell. Unfortunately, thats what you get in living in this country and trying to voice your opinion (without any strong political and financial credentials). I have mentioned this earlier, people keep complaining of "brain drain" here in India as tech graduates keep leaving India for opportunities abroad; I thought I won't be that one and will do something for the country; it's just too difficult, I have add enough, I can't wait to leave. I always tell people to just be anonymous, having your personal identity linked when saying anything remotely offensive is just an open invitation for personal attacks and things like this.

eklavya 6y ago
I am sorry you had this experience but bad news, no place is safe from retaliatory litigation. Best of luck for your journey abroad.
- throwaway3699 6y ago
  I think the US would qualify, no? You can't be sued for telling the truth.
  - ISL 6y ago
    You can be sued for anything. The plaintiff may not win, it might get dismissed immediately, but they can always file suit.
  - nikanj 6y ago
    Read the Theranos book (Bad Blood), you very much can be sued for exposing scams
saimiam 6y ago
I'm sorry that this happened to you but now that it has happened to you and to this guy, I looking forward to the day when one or both of these two things happens: 1. anonymous whistleblowing/exposes of shady business practices becomes a thing 2. hedgefunds like muddy waters emerge in India whose goal is to find rotten companies and profit off them through short selling Hope it rains creative destruction on such companies.

fareesh 6y ago

Pathetic. All this dude did was show users their fake ads and fake reviews. He's also showcased reviews where the instructors don't seem to know much about how the internet works. Now the legal system is being used to maliciously prosecute him. There is little hope for this man in India given the level of corruption and rot in the system. If there are well connected folks in the west who want to spend their time on actual injustice as opposed to casting in Hollywood movies and other first world problems, I'd invite them to speak up for this man and contact the investors / folks at Disney and other Byju's investors. Also if you know folks at Reddit or YouTube congratulate them on having such a trash tier DMCA review process where a decent man with the intention of protecting a gullible population of poor folks can't stand up to a scam corporation backed by a mammoth like Disney, on your platform.

swiley 6y ago
This is exactly why so many people freak out about: 1) YouTube being the only place people go to watch videos online 2) These awful DMCA takedown processes.
- fareesh 6y ago
  Big tech has basically monopolized all the attention and all the talent. Some of the smartest people of our time are working on ad delivery platforms, aka propaganda machines. Not only that, in this case it looks like a big advertiser can just call a senior exec at YouTube and yell at him and magically a channel that's critical of the advertiser will vanish. I'd be very surprised if I'm wrong.
paledot 6y ago
Rarely am I the one to stand up for Google, but the DMCA is such a garbage law that they have no choice. They don't have the legal ability to call bullshit on the takedown. It's the video creator's job under the DMCA to prove themselves innocent, under penalty of perjury. (No such penalty exists for filing a false claim, BTW.)
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago

pionerkotik 6y ago

I hope these WhiteHat Jr fellas get hit hard by the Streisand effect.

villgax 6y ago
Yeah hopefully parents glance at news articles & think real hard before forking over $2000/yr

gogopuppygogo 6y ago

Josh Fluke has been going after shady tech companies in his videos. He has really gotten under the skin of an Indian tech CEO: https://youtu.be/w0GhoiLS8Dc https://youtu.be/w0GhoiLS8Dc

kumarvvr 6y ago

I hope WhiteHatJr just up and dies. They are a terrible company, manipulative and taking advantage of clueless parents.

bsenftner 6y ago

Why not hit their Twitter account and say they are spamming with malicious web sites: their own.

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.is/mpo2Q https://archive.is/mpo2Q

kkarakk 6y ago

Indian twitter is full of people arguing with edtech company employees. they're a really trigger happy litigative bunch. you HAVE to bow down coz the lawyer fees will quite literally beggar you esp since court cases are dragged on forever in india...

chrismorgan 6y ago

Current title on HN: Indian Startup WhiteHatJr files suit against reviewer exposing fake ads Title on article: WhiteHat Jr and the curious case of disappearing dissent Actual subject matter: an entity abusing YouTube’s copyright systems to suppress negative comments on their advertisements (giving examples of one case of fun mockery and one finding inconsistencies in allegations made by the ads), and YouTube handling things typically badly. I see no mention whatsoever of WhiteHat Jr filing suit, and the article is much more about the abuse of the Content ID system and copyright law than about whether the ads make illegitimate claims (though it’s certainly not painting WhiteHat Jr in a favourable light even apart from their attempts at suppression of dissent).

shmde 6y ago
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BQKOGKnryhK2GLrZJIWoEkAnQx0K768f/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BQKOGKnryhK2GLrZJIWoEkAnQx0.... Kindly read this.
- chrismorgan 6y ago
  Not reading that now, but its filename “Karan Bajaj & Anr. Vs. Pradeep Poonia (1).pdf” suggests it may be lawsuit documents. But I still see no mention of a lawsuit in the article; unless there is, the title here should not mention anything about filing suit (quite apart from the HN rule of not editorialising titles, but using the site’s provided title unless there’s a good reason not to).
  - ashleshbiradar 6y ago
    https://readhacker.news/s/4zn9y https://readhacker.news/s/4zn9y this was the original link
sxt 6y ago
That's because this news is as fresh as it gets. The details of the suit were just released a few hours ago, and for the sake of international media recognition OP selected the most prominent article with a title reflecting the current scenario. I've been following this saga for a while, it's all on Reddit. Here's a summary, the guy started off by creating a YT channel a few months back called "WhitehatSr" where he documented what actually happens in these classes and showed that the 'teachers' literally have no idea what they're talking about. They're literally throwing around buzzwords whilst pressuring the child to pay for the full course to learn advanced concepts. The videos were posted to reddit, and soon the reddit accounts got taken down by the admin.(Not mods) Soon his twitters too, only his original remained, and so he began posting under his real name. The guy persisted and created more Reddit accounts and continued to post till his videos got taken down on YT. I think after creating a bit of noise and being picked up by a few minor publications, the videos were reinstated, but any other person that posted videos exposing the same had their YT taken down. At this point he was posting on LinkedIN too, and around this time he got a barrage of messages from WhiteHatJr employees, one of them claiming to file a sexual assualt case against him if he does not back down. He ignored them for a while and finally called them out, after which they did briefly stop, but soon after his LinkedIN got taken down. He said in one of his posts, that a lot of editorials would reach out to him and collect information but never end up publishing, almost as if their was a driving force stopping them from it. He soon began to get death threats to him and his family which were deleted within seconds, but he managed to capture evidence. They were from anon accounts but they made it pretty clear where they're from His most recent big development was screenshots from their Slack channels, which clearly showed their so called students with laurels don't exist, and one of them even show their CEO saying something along "We have to make the app on behalf of the student" and one of the employees says he'll get it it done. Shortly after this, a rupees 200 million lawsuit was filed against this guy for "defamation". He hasn't decided what to do I hope this gives an idea what kind of scum this 300mn USD valued "edu startup" is, whose primary targets are parents from middle and lower income households who can be enticed with a few programming jargon and images of Sundar Pichai. I'm sorry for the improper phrasing and structure, I tried to jot down what I could recollect.

shmde 6y ago

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BQKOGKnryhK2GLrZJIWoEkAnQx0K768f/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BQKOGKnryhK2GLrZJIWoEkAnQx0.... The complete suit.

ghoomketu 6y ago

This is nothing new. Another scammer called Ankit Fadia has been doing very similar stuff under the name of "Ethical hacking courses" for many many years now. He has been exposed many times (see his Wikipedia page) but most parents and students don't know much about the person running the business and fall for stupid ploys like "Employed by FBI to hack Osama" or some paid TV apperance and end up paying thousands of dollars to such companies / individuals.

gadnuk 6y ago
Thanks for mentioning this fraudster. That dude legit conned everybody at the time because Internet was fairly new to India. Here's one of my favorite pages on the internet exposing the charlatan that he is: http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/ankit_fadia/ http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/ankit_fadia/
DarmokJalad1701 6y ago
Yea. I remember when I got interested in computers as a teen, I used to think he was some hacker genius after coming across his website ( https://web.archive.org/web/20020802033500/http://hackingtruths.box.sk/ https://web.archive.org/web/20020802033500/http://hackingtru... ). I remember getting one of his books on "Ethical Hacking" and found it completely pointless.
- yp19 6y ago
  I took his course man, that too in person. Pointless is too much a nice word to describe that f@$#

blueblisters 6y ago

Looks like they made the classic Streisand effect mistake - attempts to clamp down on critical voices brought more attention to them. For a startup that ramped up and exited so quickly, they don't seem particularly smart. Notwithstanding the marketing, I don't think the product itself is egregious. Their primary sell is teaching logic ("coding") to kids through 1:1 tutoring sessions. Many Indian upper/middle class households already send their kids to in-person tutors at a very young age, and looks like Whitehat Jr found a niche that could cater to that market during the pandemic. 1:1 tutoring can be highly effective, creating a 2-sigma improvement in student performance (http://web.mit.edu/5.95/readings/bloom-two-sigma.pdf http://web.mit.edu/5.95/readings/bloom-two-sigma.pdf). Of course, Whitehat Jr likely doesn't follow specific structured pedagogy to get this advantage, and maybe the target age group is too young to get any benefits.

shmde 6y ago
> Their primary sell is teaching logic. No their primary sell is to instruct things one by one by reading a literal script. They literally have a standardized script to read to the kids. Things like drag and drop icons and stuff on an already open source website code.org. They do not teach anything. They just tell the kid what to do and make them feel that its done by them. >1:1 tutoring can be highly effective, creating a 2 sigma improvement. Agreed, they do, but not when majority of teachers they recruit don't even need to know coding to teach coding. Some teachers are literally housewives trying to make an income during this pandemic teaching coding without knowing anything remotely related to computers. I don't think circumstances like these will create a 2-sigma improvements in students. ;)

soumyadeb 6y ago

Founders, hiring managers in this group can play a big role in stopping this fraud. Maybe we should publicly call out WhieHat Jr in our job postings? A single statement like "A degree from WhiteJat Jr. won't impact your chances of getting hired" can go a long way.

villgax 6y ago
Yep, simple steps like this would ensure children & parents don't buy into this false sense of securing someone's future with some random course.

tsjq 6y ago

Byjus, the parent company , has some huge influx of investments from FaceBook

tgkprog 6y ago

Hey Poonia, I do hope that you start a fund and hire the best lawyer(s) possible. Will contribute what i can, and again after a few months if it drags on. good luck. am sure many others here will too

villgax 6y ago
He posted on r/India a while back. Many have offered to contribute & help out. https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/jyt7et/whitehatjr_filed_a_20_crore_defamation_case/ https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/jyt7et/whitehatjr_fi...

Dhruvrnaik 6y ago

Hope more and more people in and outside India become aware of this scam.

rainingcatndogs 6y ago

Their videos got removed from LBRY as well: https://old.reddit.com/r/india/comments/jsuows/all_my_videos_from_lbry_also_got_removed_so/ https://old.reddit.com/r/india/comments/jsuows/all_my_videos... I had no surprise when I heard youtube suspended him. But I'm very dissapointed that a platform like LBRY, marketing itself as a censorship-resistant youtube alternative(https://lbry.com/faq/censorship-resistance https://lbry.com/faq/censorship-resistance) deleted a whole bunch of videos which were clearly fair use and for public good.

avadhesh18 6y ago
I still can't figure out how they got lbry to remove the videos.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  They just DMCA'd them. Lbry then changed the listing. You can go get everything from the blockchain if you put in the work. They just made it so you have to put in the work. This is usually the case with most of these censorship resistant things. They have to comply with the law so they can never live up to the dream.
  - jiggytom 6y ago
    That is correct, we got a valid looking DMCA that was later disputed by the channel owner. It was unblocked. Then today, he deleted the channel and I haven't heard from him otherwise, so I'm not sure what's up.
    - rishav_sharan 6y ago
      Maybe he got frustrated with even LBRY being DMCAed. I know I would.
    - rainingcatndogs 6y ago
      When was the channel unblocked? It is disheartening to know that a company was able to silence legitimate criticism on all major platforms and even on places like LBRY.

LabyRinth123 6y ago

https://i.imgur.com/NIFvQeE.png https://i.imgur.com/NIFvQeE.png Here is a screenshot of the company's job posting

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

kcsomisetty 6y ago

i would have wished them death, but since this being my traceable identity, i dont.

2Gkashmiri 6y ago

if push comes to shove, i will contribute for this guys legal defense. who else is in?

villgax 6y ago
r/India & me too
- 2Gkashmiri 6y ago
  I am not one for activism. See my name for clues but this guy is doing an honorable job. If i want to call someone a hero, this guy would be it.

dang 6y ago

All: https://www.forbesindia.com/article/take-one-big-story-of-the-day/whitehat-jr-and-the-curious-case-of-disappearing-dissent/63627/1 https://www.forbesindia.com/article/take-one-big-story-of-th... is a bit older and has more background. There was also a smaller thread about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24867212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24867212 (Submitted URL was https://nextbigwhat.com/whitehatjr-files-20-cr-defamation-case-against-pradeep-poonia/ https://nextbigwhat.com/whitehatjr-files-20-cr-defamation-ca... but it contains no extra info. More explanation at bottom of this page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25176990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25176990.)

ashleshbiradar 6y ago
https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/22/whitehat-jrs-founder-files-2-6m-defamation-suit-against-critic/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/22/whitehat-jrs-founder-files...
- dang 6y ago
  That looks more informative so we'll switch to it from https://twitter.com/whiteHatSnr/status/1330202709203578882 https://twitter.com/whiteHatSnr/status/1330202709203578882. Thanks!

blaintiff 6y ago

> As some of the one-on-one communications between the Plaintiffs’ teachers and the Defendant have demonstrated, the former have felt extremely threatened and harassed by the Defendant which is even more pertinent given that the Plaintiffs’ entire workforce of 11,000 teachers is female Weird.

dfrtgaswiokhtbz 6y ago

minusSeven 6y ago

I am surprised how post like these hasn't got viral yet and how Streisand effect hasn't taken place yet. I thought social media and media as such would have taken it immediately.

sipulal 6y ago

The guy who is campaigning against WhiteHat Jr is struggling and being bashed. It's sad that with so much education available for free, parents are falling for this scam

uday11 6y ago

All the reviews on Google app & iOS app store on whitehatjr are FAKE.

srbsa 6y ago

The issue could be a matter of outrage, though, here in India the FOMO by parents (and students) is rather structural - been on since forever whether it is likes of Aptech/NIIT since late 90s. Here are some pointers: High-school science grds that seek STEM undergrad education in India is over 5-million annually. Commerce & Humanities is looked down upon as barely has any value in terms career prospects (Some top high-schools don't even offer Humanities). For STEM subjects, over 5-million aspirants compete for less than 100K 'meaningful' seats - cuthroat yet? FOMO in the failed education system is structural. Else to blame companies from byjus, to unacademy, to upgrad, all of which claim to deliver on "Career Changing Education" at high-markups, is lame!

blackhatjr 6y ago

The employees are forced to adopt unethical tactics to meet the aggressive business targets

blackhatjr 6y ago

The sales employees in the company are coerced to adopt unethical practices to meet the aggressive sales target.

baali 6y ago

Twitter thread of arguments being made by the involved parties in the court: https://twitter.com/LiveLawIndia/status/1330743096531795969 https://twitter.com/LiveLawIndia/status/1330743096531795969

villgax 6y ago
Thanks!

lubna1210 6y ago

I had reached out to white hat junior as a volunteer to teach kids and share the knowledge I acquired through my education and work experience. I explicitly mentioned to them that I'm not looking for a salary. I have a stable job and free time to help upskill children who cannot afford a fee. A little background : I used to teach in India (for about 8 years along with my core job) but having moved to a new country, commuting became a little difficult and I gave it up. With an online platform such as white hat jr., I thought this would be really convenient for me and helpful for children. And here is how they responded : only if you commit to 30 hours a week, can we onboard you because other teachers are competing.. This was obviously not possible for me, as I already have a job. My argument was - I am an experienced teacher, with 9+ years in the IT industry. And I don't even want money for my services, just be flexible to maybe 15-20 hours a week. This kept going on for a while, and then I realized that their cause is not to educate but make money. So I gave up.

TMisra 6y ago
Are you now teaching in any form online?Would like to know .
- lubna1210 6y ago
  Not at the moment.
villgax 6y ago
One aspect of their hiring seems to be just hiring housewives who want to have a side job, which allows the company to keep paying low & also to brag about the same whilst undermining actual experience or knowledge about the courses. Which was exposed by parents & the reviewer by the quality of classes, not to mention laughable tweets of the children putting up some random app on the app stores.

extrapao 6y ago

The court has now barred him from speaking. And WhiteHat has sued another guy. Found this publication is covering the cases -- INC42 Second lawsuit against another critic: https://inc42.com/buzz/after-poonia-whitehat-jr-files-1-9-mn-suit-against-angel-investor-aniruddha-malpani/ https://inc42.com/buzz/after-poonia-whitehat-jr-files-1-9-mn... Court bars critic from talking about WhiteHat in first lawsuit: https://inc42.com/buzz/breaking-whitehat-jr-vs-poonia-hc-restrains-poonia-from-commenting-told-to-take-down-posts/ https://inc42.com/buzz/breaking-whitehat-jr-vs-poonia-hc-res... This is just ridiculous.

villgax 6y ago
The way in which everyone has overlooked the abuse of Copyright Flagging System & silencing criticism is just appalling, don't even get me started on the imaginary kid they posted in their Ads. Lol they claim hacking of slack conversations which in fact is something their internal employees have shared to blow the lid on their fake claims of kids making apps & doing 'coding'.

T3RMINATED 6y ago

WhiteHat Jr is a SCAM... do not use it!

pravin82 6y ago

the rate at which WhiteHatjr is lying, very soon they will declare wolf gupta to be satoshi nakamoto

bobbydreamer 6y ago

My colleague is byju customer and he got byju for his son because all his apartment people do it for their kids, it sort of showed responsible parents. It costed him a Rs.70k. He is well off so it's fine for him. It's just a online tution centre, that's it backed by pretty powerful people to make money during a IPO. What happens after IPO is another story, look at SChand IPO was Rs.700 now it's at Rs.70. Now they have to tie up with college or govt to give undergraduate certificates and hook some companies for employment already most colleges do that. School or college experience is gone. I won't call it scam, it just sent out of hand. What happens when Nobel person meets VCs.

bigfoot99 6y ago

Can someone please record this somewhere before it’s taken down permanently: https://themorningcontext.com/internet/indias-whitehatjr-is-startup-hell https://themorningcontext.com/internet/indias-whitehatjr-is-...