

Hacker News Meetup Cologne Hostile Takeover - bitboxer
http://www.meetup.com/Cologne-Startup-Pitch-Night/messages/boards/thread/28544502

======
blacktar
The backstory is that I, Vidar Andersen, the original initiator of the Cologne
meetup - initially make a mistake.

I made a mistake in not updating my payment details before my credit card
expired earlier this year. Meetup.com then automatically stepped me down as an
organizer and mailed the group that I had stepped down as an organizer. IMO
that's a pretty lame way of doing business, but hey, it's their business and
not mine. Apparently it works for them.

Then I tried to update my payment details with new credit card details to no
avail. It just wasn't possible to make meetup.com accept any new credit card
for me anymore. I was only getting error messages. I then contacted Meetup.com
and notified them about the situation.

At that same time, I asked co-organizer Francis to and add a credit card to
automatically take over as organizer for me and reinstate my organizer status.
Said. Done. Problem solved, right? Not so fast.

In the meantime, meetup.com got back to me and revoked Francis' status and
gave the organizer status back to me with a kind offer of an extended new
grace period as organizer to sort the payment issue out. Meanwhile, I was
still unable to update my payment details and add any new credit card
credentials without getting error messages and I notified Meetup.com of this.
I have still yet to hear back from them on that.

It's worth noting that had meetup.com just left it as it were with Francis'
payment details as the organizer, we wouldn't have been in this predicament in
the first place.

Yesterday when the group had yet to expire and I had yet to hear back from
meetup.com on my latest issue report, the Hacker News Cologne Meetup group was
taken over by an unknown individual. Or in meetup.com's parlance, someone
"stepped up to be the organizer" of the group.

I immediately reached out to this person informing them of the payment issue
situation, thanking them for stepping up but informing them that it was
neither needed or wanted, offering to resolve the ownership issue amicably and
in private as soon as possible. I never heard back.

In stead I woke up to what now seems to be a blatant attempt to aggressively
acquire customers for their event(s). The name, logo and purpose of the group
had been changed to something completely different.

Then mass mailings started to arrive from the person who had taken over our
group accusing, us the real organizers, of lying and trying to change the
group [back to the original state]. Needless to say, we do not agree.

As I scrambled to counter the accusations and inform the group's members, we
the original organizers were getting our organizer status removed from this
individual. We were also barred from mailing to the group without censorship
and approval by the same individual. Needless to say, those messages did not
come through to the group. Then I posted the same messages to the group's
message boards, just to find the hijacker removing the boards altogether. In a
matter of minutes we were effectively shut out, unable to communicate with the
community over meetup.com.

So that's where we're at right now. We the original Hacker News Cologne Meetup
organizers are completely out of control of our own community platform on
meetup.com. We've filed a complaint with meetup.com to resolve the situation
and it is still pending a reply. And yes, we do appreciate the sweet irony of
a hacker group hacked as we move on.

We apologize for the intermission and it's now back to business as usual:
We'll meet up again on schedule with two awesome new speakers lined up for you
at SolutionSpace, November 28th 1900 CET.

This time we are relying on you instead of meetup.com to get the word out. You
know what to do.

~~~
bitboxer
I was removed from the group, too.

~~~
blacktar
Let's get everybody to leave the meetup.com group.

~~~
bitboxer
That Women deactivated the feature to see who is a member of that group. We
can't contact all of them, only the people we know. Manually.

~~~
blacktar
First thing I did was to save the members list. :) I've already reached out to
99% percent of the members but we still need everybody's help getting the word
out: <http://hncgn.org>

------
c1sc0
Co-organizer here (Francis). We're dealing with it. In the meantime we would
like to ask everyone to refrain from public attacks on this Meredith character
who took over the group. Of course the Hacker News Meetup is still on & we'll
announce a new date through non-meetup.com channels soon!

------
c1sc0
We're trying to get this message out while we resolve this, please help us
spread it!

Guys,

As you may know, today the Hacker News Cologne Meetup.com group got hijacked.
That doesn't mean it's not business as usual, though: The next meetup is
scheduled for 1900 hrs CET @ Solution Space on Nov 28th and we have a new
exciting special guest from the US on Skype and a YCombinator alum who will be
joining us IRL to share from his experiences with us.

We're resolving the meetup.com hijacking farce in a civilized manner, so it
would be cool if:

1) We all refrain from personal attacks on the hijacker

2) We all help spread this message far & wide. We personally can’t reach
everyone directly, but hey, this is the intarwebs and you know better than us
how to get the word out to the right people.

We will discuss and decide on an alternative to Meetup.com during our next IRL
meetup.

Cheers, The Crew (Francis, Vidar & Maik … the original HN Meetup Cologne
Organizers)

------
bitboxer
Okay, the link is now dead. A women called Meredith did a hostile takeover of
the hacker news cologne meetup group and renamed it. She removed Vidar, the
main organizer from the Admin list and now has full controll of the meetup
group.

This is outrages that it is even possible to do this.

~~~
dbaupp
It doesn't look dead for me: it's now called "Startup Pitch Night".

~~~
bitboxer
The link was to a public post on that group that described the situation. That
post was removed as was the complete discussion and mailing list

~~~
dbaupp
Oh, I see!

------
blacktar
Hi, Vidar, the original co-organizer here. We're on top of the situation and
will be announcing the next Hacker News Meetup Cologne tomorrow. In the
meantime, it would be cool if everybody refrains from personal attacks on
Meredith. It seems she's a real person. Let's keep it nice and clean.

------
blacktar
It seems there was a concerted effort to take over the meetup.com group where
the hijacker joined with two profiles in two steps with a clear intent of a
hostile takeover.

First they joined with one (profile X) to listen in, then a second (profile Y)
with the same name when the group was about to expire. Then profile Y "stepped
up" to take over the group and delegated org status to profile X too.

They then later removed profile X completely, leaving only Y (all the time
profile X and Y identically named, identically looking) as the organizer.

The timing of the events as observed seem to support this thesis.

(Update). Doing some testing, we also found it quite easy to find expiring
meetup.com groups in public, e.g.
[https://www.google.com/search?q=%22This+Meetup+no+longer+has...](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22This+Meetup+no+longer+has+an+Organizer.+Without+an+Organizer%2C+it+will+disappear+from+our+website+in+15+day\(s\).%22&oq=%22This+Meetup+no+longer+has+an+Organizer.+Without+an+Organizer%2C+it+will+disappear+from+our+website+in+15+day\(s\).%22&aqs=chrome.0.57.1283&sugexp=chrome,mod=14&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#hl=en&sclient=psy-
ab&q=site:meetup.com+%22This+Meetup+no+longer+has+an+Organizer%22&oq=site:meetup.com+%22This+Meetup+no+longer+has+an+Organizer%22&gs_l=serp.3...6015.6015.3.6993.1.1.0.0.0.0.82.82.1.1.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.t0LgJRIbgAU&pbx=1&fp=1&bpcl=37643589&biw=1440&bih=760&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&cad=b&sei=gOCaUIaaDcGa0QWTlIEI)

------
blacktar
It would be cool if everybody who posted the URL to the previous Hacker News
Cologne meetup.com group on their blogs or profiles would update it to
<http://hncgn.org> and help reach out to everybody informing them of the
change. Thanks!

------
ghurlman
I just want to caution folks that whoever did this using this "Meredith"
account is not necessarily (and most likely is not) Meredith, the person. It's
much more likely that a hacked account would be used to do something malicious
like this.

~~~
veemjeem
This "Meredith" also runs these meetup groups as well:

<http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Startup-Pitch-Night>

<http://www.meetup.com/Chicago-Startup-Pitch-Night>

<http://www.meetup.com/New-York-Startup-Pitch-Night>

She's also a member of multiple meetup groups in NYC, so my guess is that
she's likely a real person who lives in NYC, but just happens to want to be an
admin for other meetup groups in random cities.

This was found by simply doing a reverse image search of her profile picture
on google images.

She also the organizer of Startup Pitch Night, which explains her meetup
affiliations. Her full LinkedIn profile can be found here:

<http://www.linkedin.com/in/meredithmonroe>

(the profile used the same profile photo found on meetup.com)

~~~
c1sc0
Yes, I saw that but it does not help me understand _why_ someone would want to
do something like this. That being said, the best approach right now is to
consider the Meetup.com null & void for the purpose of "Hacker News Cologne
Meetup". We'll discuss alternatives IRL during the next meetup. (see post
above)

~~~
veemjeem
I think it's fairly obvious why someone would do this? Suppose you want to
create an event that happens to have a similar audience as those who might
attend a Hacker News meetup. Now you can create a marketing message to those
people without spending any effort in recruiting members. It's easier to do a
hostile takeover than trying to create a meetup event from scratch.

In a way, it's like buying a very targeted email list.

However, I'm sure there will probably be a backlash in this case, and I doubt
Meredith would show up at any of these events because she'll probably get
stoned to death there.

~~~
c1sc0
Exactly what I was thinking & what got me worried: why do this if your
intentions are honest? I hope this is just a terrible case of bad judgement.
We may be pirates, but we gave up stoning a while ago. May I suggest a good
discussion over a glass of Koelsch instead? I know who'll be buying!

------
blacktar
Update: Meetup.com support finally got back to me and is now working to
restore the group, fully or in part depending on the damage done. Before we
rush to conclusions, please consider that no decision has been made to
continuing using meetup.com as the community platform. That's up to you to
decide at the next meetup. As Apple says, "We like to have options". ;)

~~~
bitboxer
I hope they remove that Meredith Character completely from Meetup.com and
change the policies to prevent hostile group takeovers in the future.

~~~
blacktar
We are also in touch with the dev people at meetup.com voicing our concerns
about the ease of automated group scavenging. ;)

------
blacktar
For HNCGN people stumbling on this thread, I've posted an official
announcement of the next and 11th Hacker News Meetup Cologne
[http://stopmebeforeiblogagain.com/hacker-news-cologne-
meetup...](http://stopmebeforeiblogagain.com/hacker-news-cologne-meetup/)

------
blacktar
This just in. The name of the hijacked group is now "Hacker News - Deleting -
Documented extreme libel by members" and the "Meredith" character has removed
their profile image.

Keep calm and carry on.

------
blacktar
And it's gone. <http://www.meetup.com/Hacker-News-Cologne/> == "The Meetup
Group you're looking for doesn't exist."

~~~
bitboxer
Have you been contacted by meetup.com till now? Why don't they react on this
shit?

~~~
blacktar
meetup.com has a 36h reply policy and to their credit, they did get back to us
well within that trime frame now and we're now working to have the group
restored.

------
blacktar
And we're back in control at the original meetup.com group.

Guys, thanks for your support and thanks to the guys at meetup.com com for
handing the group back to the community.

------
Eduard
This submission got a sudden drop in ranking.
<http://hnrankings.info/4754269/>

~~~
blacktar
I noticed. What do you think caused the drop?

~~~
Eduard
One reason could be someone with downvoting rights downvoted this to oblivion.

~~~
blacktar
I don't see why someone would use their admin privileges to downvote this
thread, though. Maybe just the effect of falling off the front page? We had no
intentions of making this public ourselves (as to avoid feeding the troll) and
we're just trying to get our perspective of the situation across now that the
cat is out of the bag here.

------
Eduard
Now I got kicked out of the group as well.

~~~
blacktar
Were there any further messages or mails sent from the new "organizer"?

~~~
Eduard
No, just a generic "You were removed from this group" Meetup message.

~~~
blacktar
And now I was removed too. Yay.

