
My Livecoding.tv account deletion saga - drakonka
http://liza.io/my-livecoding-dot-tv-account-deletion-saga/
======
dang
This has gone beyond PR disaster theater and become an outlier. I've
temporarily banned Michael's account until it is resolved.

Commenters here should be considering scenarios in which glee would not be a
humane response to all this.

~~~
tzs
> This has gone beyond PR disaster theater

I'm not sure this is a PR disaster. Googling, I only see major coverage in
this HN thread, and on /r/technology on Reddit. There was a big thread on
/r/programming but the mods there deleted that. There are another several
discussions on assorted minor subreddits.

None of the major tech news sites or blogs seem to be picking it up.
/r/technology can be enough of a cesspool that many tech people don't bother
with it. Unless the news sites and blogs are just waiting for more information
before running their stories, it looks like this might blow over with little
damage to livecoding.tv.

~~~
denniskane
"Might" is quite a stretch here. A search for "livecoding" now ranks this
thread in the #2 spot, just after the site in question. The damage has already
been done, I think.

------
nv-vn
I'm not very fond of the admins on there (but not really in the same sense). I
signed up maybe the first week that the website was up and found a bug. I
reported it to the admins, who then criticized me of trying to hack their
website and insisted that I was the same person as another user who had
spammed their site. They told me that our IPs were the same (and when I asked
them to tell my what my IP supposedly was they simply refused). They banned my
account after that and I was forced to make a new one (because at the time it
was impossible to watch without an account). The next account I made worked
for about a week, but then they banned it as well, I guess because it was from
the same IP. I don't think I even used that account once after signing up.
Finally, I signed up on a VPN because I wanted to watch a friend who was going
to stream on there, and that's the account that I've been using since. I think
that they tried to ban that one as well after I logged in from my actual IP
because it would log out all the time and I couldn't use any of the available
account integrations to log in (having to do so directly by the
username/password).

~~~
DrMJG_HN
Please send me a personal message and I'll track your case and see what
happened.

~~~
empressplay
Dude, honestly, you just need to stop.

------
drakonka
So it really looks like the new profile _was_ deleted by Livecoding and then
registered by someone else, who initially put a modified version of the libel
back onto it and has now linked to their own video. I would like to stress
that this really does _not seem_ to be Michael's doing this time, but a third
party who saw this and grabbed my previous username.

On a slightly different note - I have seen some people express some sort of
satisfaction in Michael's poor handling of this, specifically on this thread.
To me it does not feel right to post these sorts of reactions to what seem to
be unwell, possibly almost delusional comments on the part of this person. In
fact it seems to be potentially dangerous and irresponsible. This person seems
genuinely confused and is going through some possibly serious mental or
emotional issues. Something just seems very off about these responses. I am
the last person to defend his unprofessional business tactics or communication
skills and of course this whole thing seems to have been grossly mishandled,
but at this point I don't think a person in their right rational mind would
react in the way he has and I would think very hard before making personal
comments that might push him further into turmoil right now.

Of course nobody has to listen to me, but I feel it needed to be said. I
didn't write this post or post these screenshots to make a joke out of a
person or be cruel to someone who seems to be unwell. I just wanted my account
deleted.

~~~
DougMerritt
> I just wanted my account deleted.

Totally fair.

------
drakonka
It looks like Livecoding have now updated my profile for me, to claim I am
"spamming them":

[https://www.livecoding.tv/lazer/](https://www.livecoding.tv/lazer/)

~~~
jamiegreen
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.

~~~
tptacek
What'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?

~~~
nissehulth
I 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_ferr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/timferriss/comments/3g2mjg/tim_ferriss_me_would_love_ama_ideas/ctuacjo)

~~~
DanBC
Feel 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
This?
[https://twitter.com/StartupLJackson/status/63963265474104115...](https://twitter.com/StartupLJackson/status/639632654741041152)

"Startup L. Jackson ‏@StartupLJackson Sep 4

[Startup L. Jackson Retweeted Ced]

How to make your team completely ineffective.

Treat communication & collaboration w hostility.

Done."

------
drakonka
Just a quick update - I can no longer reset my password, so either they have
actually deleted my account now (great!) or just changed the email address.
Either way there is no use speculating now as my profile page is a 404 and
there is no way to tell with certainty one way or the other whether my account
has actually been removed (I suppose one could try to register the username
"Lazer", but I am way too sick of this to go near their registration form
again).

I filed an ICO report early this morning when the libel on their website
stayed there overnight with no sign of changing hours after the cofounder's
and Y Combinator president's replies; I simply didn't know what else to try
and someone suggested looking into the ICO. So I guess it will just be in
their hands now and I'll see what comes out of it, if anything. For now I
think this is the end of the road in terms of getting the best possible
outcome with a company like this. They are clearly not going to admit their
mistake and they seem to still be in (seemingly really bad) damage control
mode. I think any further interaction with them would just be a waste of time
at this point.

~~~
austenallred
Thanks for this. It was really fun to watch a CEO completely torpedo his
startup in less than 24 hours by publicly flipping the bird to a message board
filled with its would-be users for some reason I cannot begin to fathom.

We should do this again sometime.

EDIT: After reading through a bunch of the CEO's comments, I'm now seriously
concerned there may be a mental illness at play. I probably shouldn't have
made light of the situation; calling out several users such as minimaxir as
Alex from LiveCoding honestly seems delusional.

~~~
dongping
The CEO is not even _trying_ to do the damage control.

~~~
austenallred
They're tweeting that most of the comments on here are coming from
competitors. I think the problem is they're so overly defensive they're
completely in denial.

~~~
profmonocle
Claiming that everyone criticizing them is a competitor or a banned user seems
to cross the line from overly defensive to paranoid.

------
fyarebox
I'm amazed. Michael, if you're reading this - get someone else to handle this
situation. Anyone, even it's just the guy who does SEO.

Your company has appeared on HN before, and as a YC-backed company you should
probably have some idea of the type of people who are part of this community.
It amazes me that you believe you can respond to this story by attempting to
doxx trusted long-term users (or rather, just plain lying about their
identities) and claim that the people here are attacking your company.

Even more so that you believe you can claim that a "majority of the comments
[in this HN thread] come from competitors and banned users" (@livecodingtv).
Most of the people in this thread have never used your products (myself
included) - and in response to this story, many who may have never will.

You are the one attacking your company. Stop lying on Twitter. Stop trying to
avoid criticism by claiming that your (outraged) potential customers are
competitors or spammers. Stop trying to remove pseudonymity from HN commenters
(especially the ones trying to be at least slightly sympathetic to your
company).

Consider the fact that you may be facing legal action for some of your
behavior. The way you respond to these accusations will undoubtedly be
reflected in any proceedings, and at at the moment I don't think you're
helping your case. (IANAL)

I'm not going to make jabs at your psychological state like a few of the
comments here have, but it would be in your interest to visit a mental
healthcare professional (if only to check you're capable of handling the
pressure caused by this story).

------
deftnerd
I've been unimpressed with LiveCoding.tv's spammy tactics as well.

The decided to enable email notification of video streams for users who have
already signed up by using an opt-out system rather than opt-in system.

I created an account out of casual interest and then weeks later got slammed
with dozens of spammy "stream is starting" emails every day.

I did actually try to delete my account as well but gave up when it appeared
that they didn't allow for that option. Instead I've just been training Google
that all the email from them is Spam.

~~~
seivan
They are super spammy, I've unsubscribed several times and still get emails.
Sticking with Twitch.

~~~
jraines
I was about to sign up, with about the same reason and interest level as the
post author. How's Twitch for this?

~~~
thecatspaw
Twitch officially doesnt allow non-gaming related (game-dev is ok) streams. As
long as you dont stream anything explicit you should be ok though

~~~
bentpins
As of last week they expanded the definition of what they allow, explicitly
mentioning coding

[http://help.twitch.tv/customer/portal/articles/2176641-creat...](http://help.twitch.tv/customer/portal/articles/2176641-creative-
faq) Q. What if my creative broadcast is gaming-related art, game development,
programming, or involves creation of music? A. You are free to choose whatever
you think is the most appropriate category for your creative broadcast, so
long as you adhere to the Rules of Conduct for the category when doing so.

Q. Does all Creative category content have to be gaming related? A. No, you’re
free to broadcast your creative process for any genre!

------
empressplay
So, 12 hours on and the account still hasn't been deleted...

I mean, at this point you have to assume none of the co-founders has the
ability to delete it (because common sense would suggest they would have by
now, if they could have, to mitigate the on-going public-relations disaster)
probably because they outsourced all of their development and really have no
clue about how their website actually works.

Under normal circumstances, this could be understandable, but I think there's
an obvious irony when the site in question streams people, well, coding!

Now, I suppose it's fair to argue you don't need to know rocket science to
make a space game either, but in this case, I'd think there'd be an
expectation the people running the site actually at least kinda-sorta know how
to code themselves.

Or at least be able to delete some records from a database.

~~~
sama
YC is an investor in the company. We've been trying all day to reach the CEO
and we've been unsuccessful so far.

Obviously, this is very bad and we hope the company will fix it quickly.

~~~
drakonka
Thanks, I hope you guys can get somewhere. I'm preparing a complaint to file
with the ICO and looking into other options since nothing else seems to have
worked and I have no idea what else to do, but really I just want to have my
account deleted and move on. I can't believe a simple support ticket spun out
into this debacle.

~~~
avinassh
Please sue them for libel.

------
drakonka
Just noticed that the text on my profile has now been changed to "Marked for
removal from database". Perhaps they fixed their "cron job".

mumphster mentioned on Twitter that that he just got banned also and actually
managed to have an exchange with the CEO:

[https://twitter.com/elgruntox/status/661063421283012608](https://twitter.com/elgruntox/status/661063421283012608)

[https://twitter.com/elgruntox/status/661063608302866432](https://twitter.com/elgruntox/status/661063608302866432)

I'm not sure where the first line is coming from about any kind of information
that they were "doing migrations" (I have had no such communication). My
videos were already deleted because I deleted them one by one before they
changed my password, put in a redirect back to home on my account, and updated
my profile for me.

Anyway, at least they're not referencing dice.com, which I have nothing to do
with, anymore. I guess we're just back at square one now.

~~~
DrMJG_HN
Hi Liza – This is Michael from Livecoding.tv. I hope the tension has calmed
down a bit. Am traveling in Europe and thus not always reading emails. Apology
for how our support handled your account deletion request and the emails back
and forth. It was not really nice and needed given that your account had no
content on it, we even deleted all your videos, and disabled your account.
They thought you were a troll and just playing funny pranks on them with your
friends.

Sorry that it took 11 days to get it resolved. We are a small team and as such
if one team member is traveling or on holidays some work/emails get delayed.
We are also in the middle of a big migration to v2.0 and thus we have some
backlog pending. Again I apologize!

Let me know if you want to talk on the phone and I’ll apologize again. We will
send you an Amazon gift card to soothe things a bit.

Thanks!

~~~
tobr
There are so many questions that are unanswered. "We are a small team" is not
an excuse for what has happened.

Considering that your support person original said "I would be happy to delete
your account", considering that someone at Livecoding.tv vandalized the
profile page, and considering that the only thing the user has ever requested
is for the account to be deleted - can you really say with a straight face at
this point that deleting the account is "not needed"?

~~~
austenallred
"We are a small team so we changed the text on your account multiple times
throughout the day, falsely claiming you were a spammer and worked for
Dice.com instead of deleting your account."

------
vertis
Slightly unrelated note, but I received a spam email from
Michael@Livecoding.tv on Saturday. I will NEVER EVER use a site that spams
like this:

> Hey Luke,

> I've been searching code repos and found that you also love coding. Would be
> cool to see your awesome code and projects on Livecoding.tv

> Livecoding.tv is a livestreaming platform for coders to share their code and
> hang out. We have users from 194 countries and 3,000 products are being
> built live using over 35 different programming languages and frameworks.
> Come and complete your first 10 stream hours on Livecoding.tv and get a
> chance to win a cool Livecoding.tv T-shirt :)

> If you love your friends, also forward this email to them.

> Michael > Founder, Livecoding.tv > Livechannel:
> [https://www.livecoding.tv/drmjg](https://www.livecoding.tv/drmjg)

~~~
snake117
This reminded me of Eli the Computer Guy's rant:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h66PNIUtaaE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h66PNIUtaaE)

~~~
bhrgunatha
That was posted in July. They clearly haven't changed their approach or
tactics. It's unbelievably short-sighted and damaging.

------
minimaxir
It's worth noting that when Livecoding.tv first launched, you were _forced_ to
register and log-in to watch any videos. It took an entire thread on Hacker
News to force the founders to backpeddle once they were caught:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9800321](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9800321)

This isn't the first YC startup I've seen with such blatant "growth hacking"
tactics, and it's disappointing.

~~~
maxerickson
What does "caught" mean in this context?

If you can't use the site without registering, it probably isn't a secret that
you can't use the site without registering.

I can see using a phrase like 'called out' or 'called on their bullshit' or
whatever, but I don't see how they were 'caught'.

------
brchsiao
So the cron job turned out to be an invented lie told to a user they
essentially assumed would be too stupid to think about it. Which is it then,
that they e.g. have a tired support team using a canned response that includes
a lie? Or is it the founders themselves thinking their audience are fools?

Sure, separate business policy from code, but it seems unwise to assume your
users are technically ignorant when your site is about inviting programmers to
stream their work.

~~~
GhotiFish
could be a monthly cron job. Principle of charity right?

Of course, assuming that it is a monthly cron job and the account actually is
scheduled for deletion then, the question would be: Why in gods name would you
not just say that?! "Your account is scheduled for deletion at so and so
time", and if at that point you're complaining that it's not fast enough, no
one would really have much sympathy for that.

It's still possible this isn't an example of a vindictive and petty individual
lying through their teeth. It may still be an example of someone who with poor
PR skills, and is not coping with the situation those poor PR skills created.

------
ericdykstra
I hope Liza comes up with a follow-up post: "the saga continues"

They continue to deny any wrongdoing, and continue in their favorite game of
copy-and-paste-replys on Twitter.
[https://twitter.com/livecodingtv/with_replies](https://twitter.com/livecodingtv/with_replies)

Here's one directed at me (and 2 other people, since I guess in this instance
they were too lazy to copy and past the reply 2 extra times:
[https://twitter.com/livecodingtv/status/661153102750425088](https://twitter.com/livecodingtv/status/661153102750425088)

This deep in a hole and they're still convinced they are the victims...
Unbelievable.

~~~
empressplay
Hm. All my critics are competitors or bad actors we had to ban. Convenient. Or
paranoia.

In all seriousness though, I worry about the co-founder(s) mental health. It's
all fun to poke at people and say they've lost it, but running a startup is a
highly stressful endeavour and it shouldn't be ignored when people break,
which I suspect has happened in this case.

It's a tough situation. They'll want to defend what they have, tooth and nail,
because it means everything to them. We'll want to counter against what they
say, because we feel it's wrong to let that sort of thing go unchallenged. But
who wins?

~~~
madaxe_again
Aye. There's a lesson here to be had for all of us, which is that sometimes
you've got to step back and let someone who isn't as emotionally invested in
the company as you take the reins, as you can end up doing extraordinary
damage to yourself by acting rashly.

I speak from experience - I've been at this lark for a decade now, and have on
more than a few occasions found myself sincerely regretting how I've responded
to a situation, as I've ended up emotional and escalating the matter, rather
than responding rationally and calmly. I recall literally pounding my head on
the office wall - in front of an investor - painfully to this day. Childish.

We all mistakes, but we also have to learn when to admit our fault, and when
to step away from a situation because we aren't the right person to handle it.

------
downandout
I have noticed a recurring theme with YC companies. Many of them....let's just
say that they weren't selected for the strength of their technical
implementation or people skills. A good example of this is Magic. This is a
site that few people probably remember, but they raised $12M at a $40M
valuation after 2 weeks in existence back in March. More than 7 months after
raising this money, the company, whose entire business model is dependent upon
people sending them SMS messages detailing the things that they need or want,
has yet to place a tappable SMS link on its home page.

The simple fact of the matter is that money from VCs and/or an endorsement by
YC speaks only to the potential of the idea and the pedigree of at least one
founder. Nothing else seems to even be considered, even when writing eight
figure checks. Given this situation, no one should be surprised that YC
companies sometimes go off the rails like this.

~~~
DrMJG_HN
You might dislike Ycombinator because of whatever reason from the past, but
Ycombinator is overall by any objective measure very successful in building
companies. Am not saying this just because I was in Ycombinator - if you are
honest to yourself you will agree.

~~~
klapinat0r
Would you mind elaborating on "because I _was_ in Ycombinator"? Typo or did
something change during today?

------
vespakoen
Here is my interaction with livecoding.tv's support about removing videos,
they don't seem to like removing stuff from their website!

[https://www.livecoding.tv/video/designing-a-touch-screen-
int...](https://www.livecoding.tv/video/designing-a-touch-screen-interface-4/)
@ 20:37

~~~
roflchoppa
can you submit DMCA claim to them?

~~~
nv-vn
Doubt it. Their T&C probably protects them from that kind of thing, but I
can't even find it on their site right now.

~~~
deepnet
2.Except for Broadcaster Content already downloaded by users, the foregoing
license granted by you terminates regarding a specific piece of Broadcaster
Content once you remove or delete that Broadcaster Content from the
Livecoding.tv Service.

\-- From Livecoding T&C
[https://www.livecoding.tv/terms/](https://www.livecoding.tv/terms/)

seems from the T&C you should be able to remove or delete videos

------
drakonka
Just got another email from Michael trying to convince me that they did the
right thing and deleted my videos from my account for me. I just cannot
understand why they keep acting like this - did they think I'd forget that I
deleted my own videos earlier in this process?

[http://i.imgur.com/Ea55D6G.png](http://i.imgur.com/Ea55D6G.png)

~~~
joeevans1000
"I hope the tension has calmed down a bit". That doesn't come across very
well.

------
ChicagoBoy11
In the span of a just a few days we have YC-backed companies being publically
outed for engaging in behavior which most of us consider pretty egregious and
would certainly warrant any rights as YC founders to be revoked. The tone of
commenters (here and w.r.t the Homejoy) can be described as mild shock. This
particular example is perhaps even worse than the Homejoy issue, as it seems
the founders have taken to personally attacking an individual user for, as far
as we can see, are pretty legitimate claims.

But I think probably the least shocked people are the YC partners. If you are
Paul G./YC, what do you do about this? By far the biggest question that YC
must confront as it expands into research, bigger and bigger classes, new
types of involvement through fellows, etc., is how to retain their ability to
suss out, deal with, or prevent things like these. I think they are fully
aware that they can't.

If anyone hasn't figured it out already, YC is becoming the first 21st century
university. In order to get there, they have to become significantly bigger,
and just like the startups they fund, that's the metric that's on their radar.

I don't think these events are a sign of YC's negligence. Instead, I think YC
is slowly transitioning to a new era in the company. Paul G and the gang are
incredibly brilliant. They knew the odds when they decided to continue this
incredibly rapid growth of batches and outreach. They aren't surprised by
these events; they are just moving to a stage where things like this are
unfortunately the cost of doing business. If Paul G is cooking dinner for you
and your few buddies over the summer every night, you aren't getting away with
this. If you are now one of thousands of people fighting for (or trying to
avoid) their attention, you certainly can.

Go around to any top school, and you see the same. Out of your couple thousand
bright-eyed, brilliant freshmen, there inevitably are a couple bad apples. But
none of them would think that a solution to this is to shrink class sizes.

~~~
forgottenpass
_If you are Paul G. /YC, what do you do about this?_

Nothing unless it gets bad press. Why do you think they care about "egregious"
behavior?

Quote From: What We Look For In Founders - Paul Graham - October 2010

    
    
        [...] 
        Naughtiness
        Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they
        tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody 
        Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions 
        right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word
        naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules
        that matter. This quality may be redundant though; it may be implied by
        imagination. [...]

~~~
meowface
I don't think that's fair. I strongly doubt PG considers spamming, or
(falsely) naming & shaming customers, as "naughtiness". That's something very
different.

~~~
DanBC
"The culture of any organisation is shaped by the worst behaviour the leader
is prepared to tolerate".

By stating that rules breaking is desirable, but not stating clearly where the
lines are, companies are not given clear enough guidance to avoid scumbag
behaviour.

------
detaro
Shameful.

Since both her and a part of Livecoding are in the EU, EU data protection laws
probaby make the situation fairly clear (and give her tools do deal with it,
but it shouldn't be necessary)

------
zachorr
I don't really get the appeal of Livecoding.tv. I've streamed a few times on
the service and it's not as good as any other live streaming service. Their
email marketing is borderline spammy, their tactics are questionable, and they
don't offer a particularly solid feature set, or anything specifically helpful
for live streaming coding that you couldn't get with YouTube or Twitch
(categories, I suppose?). The argument might be made they have audience
specifically looking to watch people write code, but I've never seen more than
~40 people at a time on one stream. You'll probably see more traffic on Twitch
in the Programming category.

------
reality_TV
This is a terrible practice for consumers, but a huge strategy win for
startups(AOL zombie account trick .. hope they forget about wanting to delete
or cancel).

I ran into this awful practice with Uber after a hack they know about lets
your account be hacked by London drivers who rip you off for rides in London
(im in the states). I went to my forgotten Uber account to cancel and found
out I have to email support and further I cant remove all payment options from
my account either. WTF ... as a consumer any company who follows such a
practice needs their ass handed to them.

On the other hand as startup person I can see the slimey merit in following
said practices.

~~~
DrMJG_HN
Hmm, i don't know how you bring Uber in this conversation, but we are really
not in the same space or sharing any information with them.

~~~
reality_TV
You along with other startups make it incredibly hard to cancel ones account.
It's a trick to keep your user base numbers high vs. offering an easy way for
the user to delete their own account themselves, as most startups use to
allow.

------
Exuma
It's also funny given the cofunders last tweet:
[https://twitter.com/jcbgreen](https://twitter.com/jcbgreen)

------
adrusi
Wow. I did one stream there a month or so ago, and an admin showed up in my
chat. They didnt do anything too out of tge ordinary, but I found their
attitude to be a little too controlling. It seems like they're trying to build
an educational platform and expect all their users to be on board with that.
The admin interaction lift a bit of a sour taste in my mouth so I didn't log
in again.

Their business model and their management competency are just too poor. They
will not be able to compete with twitch.

------
tymekpavel
I'm shocked this is a YC-backed startup. It seems standards have fallen
substantially.

------
escobar
I made an account to see how their system worked after thinking about doing a
stream myself a few months ago. After I signed up and poked around their
platform, I was none too pleased with the features or way their application
worked. They emailed me too many times (almost every day) in the first week
and I just marked them as spam and went along with my life.

Glad to hear about what's going on here, I will be sure to never stream or
give a website with this type of management my business :)

------
krisdol
At the beginning of her post, with her explaining why she got into streaming,
she almost convinced me to start an account myself; needless to say, by the
end of the post and judging from the comments here, there is no way in hell
I'd sign up.

~~~
kuschku
Good news! Many other livestreaming sites allow this!

------
lisowski
If livecoding keeps acting like this they are gonna lose whatever foothold
they currently have of coding live streaming. With twitch.tv's recent
announcment to open up streaming to creatives it is only a matter of time
until they capture this audience too.

------
zodiac
I can't speak for everyone, but unless some extraordinary new information
comes to light I personally would never use livecoding.tv after observing this
incident. It seems from the comments on this thread that a lot of HN readers
agree with me.

And since livecoding.tv is targeted at programmers and a lot of programmers
read HN, this is the end of livecoding.tv. It's surreal to watch it happen in
real time.

------
deadcoding
Huh, I saw this livecoding site advertised here by the founders, seemed like a
great idea and I hoped it would kick off. Sad to see the administration is
unprofessional. I wonder how people can fail so hard at public relations. If
they didn't want to delete her account all it would have taken is a "Sorry,
accounts can't be deleted from livecoding.tv". Instead they had to turn this
into something that destroys the reputation of their new site.

~~~
DrMJG_HN
To be frank, there were only a few videos on the account and the account was
not even visited by any other user last 30 days. It was just pending on our
tasklist.

~~~
zodiac
I think if it were only a matter of taking a long time to delete the account,
we wouldn't be so unhappy. To me, the reason your team's behavior seems
extremely unprofessional are

1\. Not telling Liza when her account would be deleted

2\. Telling her her account was deleted but not actually deleting it

3\. Sending the "Do you and your friends want to disturb us with this" email

4\. Editing Liza's account to claim that she was banned for spamming

------
jtwebman
I don't understand how a company this small doesn't get the public opinion
matters. I am will to bet they are not going to be around much longer.

------
bnj
Can you change the gender on your account? Switch it over to male and set up a
couple dozen pseudonyms to throw off their count.

If Livecoding has aligned their interests with the gender ratio of their users
to the extent that they're treating you like this, makes sense to speak back
to them on their own terms. IMHO.

~~~
drakonka
Unfortunately at this point that redirect back to home on login that I
discovered after changing my password is still there, so I doubt I can change
any part of my account details now; it's just going to sit there until they
decide to actually delete it (if ever). But I did manage to change the profile
description and stream title to make it clear that I am waiting for the
account to be deleted before the redirect was put in place.

I didn't actually connect their shadiness about deleting my account with
gender and am honestly not convinced that this is it. Sure, they were kind of
pushy about promoting the site to women, but there is actually no gender
identification on my profile other than my profile picture. I can't remember
if gender was specified somewhere in my account settings but then not publicly
displayed at this point.

~~~
kuschku
Suggestion:

Write a Cease and Desist letter to

    
    
        Livecoding.tv (Livecoding Ltd)
        20-22 Wenlock Road
        London, N1 7GU
        England
    

That should get them to stop.

A letter such as this costs less than a Euro, and means they have no excuse
not to act on it.

Otherwise you can try sending them a fax, that usually also has better chances
at success with businesses.

    
    
        ----------------
    

I kinda want to move my twitch streams over to livecoding just to be able to
get into this deletion mess and send lawyers after them now...

~~~
gaius
That's odd, their domain name suggests they are based in the small island
nation of Tuvalu.

~~~
kuschku
There are more oddities like that:

The government of the state of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany uses for most
official websites the domain .sh, which actually belongs to Saint Helena.

At this point almost all domains on .sh actually belong to companies or
governmental entities in Schleswig-Holstein, the remaining domains mostly
belong to geeks using it due to the similarity to the file ending .sh for
shell files.

Examples:

\- [http://www.nah.sh/](http://www.nah.sh/) (Official transit agency)

\- [http://www.studentenwerk.sh/](http://www.studentenwerk.sh/) (Official
Student Service Agency, operates dormitories, etc)

\- [https://www.wir-bewegen.sh/](https://www.wir-bewegen.sh/) (Kickstarter for
public projects, operated by the government; one example is "a 3D model of the
city for blind people as map, publicly accessible next to the train station")

Many more such cases exist all around the world, it is... weird.

~~~
Nullabillity
Also: .nu is owned by Niue, but is mostly used by Swedish companies (nu is
swedish for now). It was even taken over by IIS/.SE in 2013.

~~~
mithras
.nu is common in the Netherlands as well, it means the same thing in Dutch.

------
Kiro
People really need to read all of DrMJG_HN's comments in this thread. I can't
believe what I'm seeing. Completely delusional.

~~~
philbarr
And for a laugh, they need to check out how much karma he hasn't got...

------
drakonka
Well, it looks like my profile is back again...again with accusations of
spam...

[https://www.livecoding.tv/lazer/](https://www.livecoding.tv/lazer/)

~~~
fyarebox
Wow. This could be another user re-creating the account to create drama,
though. Is the rest of the profile info (favorite line of code, etc.) the
same?

I wouldn't call it impossible, but this seems like such a deliberately bad
move that I can't even believe it was done by livecoding.tv

~~~
drakonka
No, the rest of the profile info is totally different. I agree, this is
probably some troll recreating the account.

------
s4chin
I had initially considered streaming on livecoding.tv for the same reasons as
yours. Definitely won't do it now.

------
david_mitchell
I'd guess this sort of thing results from the obsession over growth. They are
desperate to make their user aquisition/retention numbers look good so they do
scammy things to keep accounts. It's sad to see the aggressive behaviour
though.

~~~
chrischen
It's probably more likely that acquisition or retention isn't good, and this
is done out of desperation.

~~~
AlwaysBCoding
It's probably this. I've livestreamed on Twitch + LiveCoding and have no clue
why you would ever use LiveCoding. Twitch and Youtube seem like they're better
in every capacity.

------
ne01
They don't deserve you! You had the full right to ask them to delete your
account!

Even if you where "an unreasonable user" they should never treat their users
like that (just for their own sake)!

Livecoding.tv should immediately admit this huge mistake and apologize to
prevent any further damage to their public image!

Calling your user a spammer?? Shame on you!!!

------
allanmacgregor
Just asked for my account to be deleted, their whole response to this
situation is insane.

------
facepalm
I think actual deletion of accounts is not a functionality that is high on any
startups list - disabling is probably the usual course of action? However, to
lie about it is another matter entirely.

~~~
deepnet
It is a legal requirement in the EU under Data Protection Laws.

~~~
moron4hire
Outright deletion of data, especially anything used in financial calculations,
might run afoul of Sarbanes-Oxley in the United States.

I say "might" because it's not exactly spelled out that way in the regulation.
Basically, any sort of reports that are used to make financial decisions must
be replicable. You have to be able to show an auditor how you came to your
numbers. You have to show how the report would have looked at the time it was
made, and what data it would have contained.

I could potentially see raw count of users, or counts of users combined with
popularity of videos (and growth of popularity across those videos) be a part
of plans on how to monetize such a site. If Livecoding.TV had made revenue
projections based on some future monetization plan and had started circulating
this plan amongst potential investors, it becomes a serious landmine to hard-
delete data.

Most places assume this just means "keep backups", but I don't know anyone who
is operationally prepared to restore year-old backups of databases _and_
running application code to be able to appease such an auditor. Full
compliance is really hard, so I almost always advise people to go for soft-
delete instead. There are any number of technical and business reasons why
soft-delete is better, too. If this report that a 3rd party registered a new
account with the same name just to be able to troll everyone involved turns
out to be true, that would be one of those reasons.

That said, that's a completely different issue than privacy compliance. Any
sane authorization system should make it easy to de-authorize specific sets of
data for _everyone_. No data request meant to go out into the world should
ever lack an authorization check. Given the difficulties of keeping tabs on
internal- versus external data, I just generally believe all data requests
should come along with an authorization check, regardless of whether or not
it's required, because you can't ever really predict what code a jr.
programmer is going to reuse some day.

------
gxespino
Shame. I was really enjoying streaming while I coded. Not so much the
livecoding platform (very buggy from my experience), but the activity itself.

I don't think I'll stream on their site again after this. Can't stand to
support founders who treat their users like this.

Twitch.tv it is.

~~~
DrMJG_HN
It was just a backlog we had. Her account and the multiple accounts her
friends created days ago never had any big content on them. There is really no
incentive for her request not to be fulfilled. You can contact awakekat on
Livecoding.tv to hear her feedback on how we treat women:
[https://www.livecoding.tv/awakekat/](https://www.livecoding.tv/awakekat/)

Her friends just created multiple accounts within a short time frame and thus
our support thought they were just trolling together.

~~~
drakonka
I don't know of any friends creating multiple accounts at all. If anything my
friends learned to _never_ create an account with your site. I would also
appreciate it if you did not "play dumb" in your communications with me. To be
honest I can't believe this is actually still happening:
[http://i.imgur.com/NT6xH5X.png](http://i.imgur.com/NT6xH5X.png)

~~~
slaxman
Near the bottom on the imgur link:

``` I think it is just a complete misunderstanding you have ```

I might be wrong. But this is almost border line delusional!

~~~
kurige
It seems to be a go-to phrase for him. From a video linked elsewhere on this
page:
[https://youtu.be/h66PNIUtaaE?t=17m38s](https://youtu.be/h66PNIUtaaE?t=17m38s)

That video was posted in July...

------
gaius
I hope your cat gets better soon!

~~~
drakonka
Thank you very much! He is better now (knock wood), but needs medication 3
times a day and may have a permanently damaged bladder. But as long as he's
happy and peeing I'm happy.

------
mumphster
when twitter bots go bad:
[https://twitter.com/livecodingtv/status/661046865488580610](https://twitter.com/livecodingtv/status/661046865488580610)

------
johnmaguire2013
Thank you for this post. I've been looking into using Livecoding in the exact
same way the author has, and now know that it is not the platform for me.

Maybe there is space for a competitor?

~~~
kuschku
Yeah, a competitor where users can easily fork the code and send a pull
request (maybe even with support for a webIDE?) sounds like it could easily
make profit in this situation...

I'm going to look into it.

------
k3n
They've also been spamming reddit pretty hard. As a mod of a programming sub,
I've had to add their domain to the automod spam list for post spam, and then
report a user or two to /r/spam for comment spam (and are now shadowbanned) .
Kind of surprised to learn that they were YC.

------
wmoxam
I put in a deletion request for my account as well
([https://www.livecoding.tv/wmoxam/](https://www.livecoding.tv/wmoxam/)).

The handling of this situation has completely nuked any trust I ever had in
this service.

------
eliteraspberrie
A word of advice to founders from the US: ignoring user requests to delete
accounts or personally identifying information is a crime in some countries.
(I'm only familiar with French and Canadian law.)

------
mumphster
Thanks for the heads up. Gonna try to get my account deleted.

[http://livecoding.tv/ell](http://livecoding.tv/ell) hopefully they get the
message.

------
cnp
This happened to me too!!!!! It took so long, and was so annoying, and i'm
still not even sure why they stopped coming.

------
late2part
Sounds like livecoding.tv is run by a bunch of jerks.

------
empressplay
hm. livecoding.tv seems to be built on top of some version of mesh-app.io
(which doesn't seem to be publicly available yet.) I wonder if this has
something to do with their inability to delete accounts...

------
ShirsenduK
So they not only use Flash but every ugly trick in the book.

~~~
DrMJG_HN
Some users prefer flash other HTML5. We are just testing HTML5 on staging
server and will release HTML5 streams soon.

~~~
spaceSub
Nobody prefers flash for video streaming. Not one person on the planet.

------
kordless
The issue here is not that Livecoding.tv isn't removing this individual's
account, but that individuals sign up for things with the expectation they
have rights to their data. Here's a gem from Livecoding.tv's TOS which clearly
indicates their intent with other people's data:

> All Materials contained on the Livecoding.tv Service are the proprietary
> property of Livecoding.tv or its subsidiaries or affiliated companies and/or
> third-party licensors. All trademarks, service marks, and trade names are
> proprietary to Livecoding.tv or its affiliates and/or third-party licensors.
> Livecoding.tv reserves all rights not expressly granted in these Terms of
> Service. Unless otherwise expressly stated in writing by Livecoding.tv, you
> are granted a limited, non-sublicensable license (i.e. a personal and
> limited right) to access and use the Livecoding.tv Service for your personal
> or internal business use only.

In short, if you sign up for an account on their site, they own EVERYTHING.
They don't have to delete your account because all of their users agreed to
these terms by using the site. Looking through the TOS, there is nothing
mentioned about canceling accounts.

I'm empathetic to the author of the article, but I will point out that
expecting ownership of your content after giving up ownership of your content
is logically unsound.

Shaming aside, not signing up for a centralized service with limited rights
like this in the first place would have resulted in less suffering for
everyone involved.

~~~
s5edvvddd
I think you are quoting the part the protects their( livecoding.tv's )
intellectual property and , and not the streamer.

The license for the streamers stars at _11.Broadcasters._

It seems you are allowed to cancel the license:

 _11\. Broadcasters

a.License from Livecoding.tv.

If you sign up for an account as a Streamer, subject to your compliance with
these Terms of Service, Livecoding.tv hereby grants to you a personal,
limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, freely revocable license to use the
Livecoding.tv Service for the uploading and distributing of authorized digital
content, including videos (" Broadcaster Content ")._

and:

 _2.Except for Broadcaster Content already downloaded by users, the foregoing
license granted by you terminates regarding a specific piece of Broadcaster
Content once you remove or delete that Broadcaster Content from the
Livecoding.tv Service._

~~~
kordless
I read through that, but that last part basically says "if someone hasn't
watched your content, you can revoke the license from the content by deleting
it". If anyone has seen any of the other content, the company owns a perpetual
license for it. Regarding their site content, it would appear they think they
own everything on the site, including user content:

> Unless otherwise indicated, all Content and other materials on the
> Livecoding.tv Services, including, without limitation...

That goes on to list all types of content, that the content is trademarked,
copyrighted, etc. and then states they own all of the licenses to it, as I
mention in my comments above.

In comparison, here's Github's statement on the rights to content:

> We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to
> the Service. Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours.

~~~
s5edvvddd
>Regarding their site content, it would appear they think they own everything
on the site, including user content:

> Unless otherwise indicated, all Content and other materials on the
> Livecoding.tv Services, including, without limitation...

... are protected by United States copyright, trade dress, patent, and
trademark laws, international conventions, and all other relevant intellectual
property and proprietary rights, and applicable laws (including in your
country of residence).

Where does it say that they own everything?? You are interpreting this whole
contract incorrectly.

------
jld89
Is there an equivalent to livecoding.tv that I can use?

------
denniskane
Did anyone else see "Eli the Computer Guy" slamming YC on his channel about an
email exchange he had with the founder of Livecoding:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h66PNIUtaaE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h66PNIUtaaE)

I found it to be fairly entertaining...

------
anon5_
> "You are scheduled to be deleted on our next cron job. Nothing complex."

Is this serious? What's a cron job have to do with knocking out information
from a rdbms?

I imagine a cron job could be useful if there was a script to clear out any
static files - but you can also invoke the script manually. "Nothing complex"
:)

~~~
kuschku
I’ll quote another comment from minimaxir:

> You're joking, but a quick Google search of [site:livecoding.tv banned]
> shows that's exactly what is happening.

> [https://www.livecoding.tv/2pointoh/](https://www.livecoding.tv/2pointoh/)

> [https://www.livecoding.tv/hekton/](https://www.livecoding.tv/hekton/)

Which shows their usual procedure for deleting or banning is... _vandalism_.

------
Shic
E Nervous system singa.e

