
Rstudio – Pending Legal Matter - amrrs
https://www.datacamp.com/community/blog/rstudio-pending-legal-matter
======
amrrs
Buzzfeed coverage (that ran last year of the original incident)
[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/daveyalba/datacamp-
sexu...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/daveyalba/datacamp-sexual-
harassment-metoo-tech-startup)

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osipov
DataCamp is a shady operation in my experience. I have no problem with the
quality of the content, however I have personally experienced issues trying to
work with them as a contractor and also have heard stories of similar issues
from other candidate content authors. In short, they have no qualms about
asking for content from authors in advance as a recruiting tactic and then
telling the authors to take a hike. Of course, they keep the content as their
intellectual property as use it as they wish.

~~~
derision
That doesn't seem any different than asking a software engineer candidate to
complete a take home coding assessment. If you don't like it then find another
company to work with.

~~~
bdcravens
Per the comment you're responding to (I don't know the veracity of the claim)
it's much different: take home assignments aren't kept as intellectual
property.

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bdcravens
> the financial benefit it gains from disparaging DataCamp and severing its
> ties with us

In other words, RStudio probably cancelled an agreement they had and DataCamp
is unhappy with that.

> the distribution, and supporting the distribution, of an article published
> by BuzzFeed

What does this even mean? They are sharing a link? Why aren't they suing
BuzzFeed? (obviously it's easier to bully a smaller company in court)

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awinder
R-Ladies dropped some cross sponsorship and there used to be a datacamp ad
link in rstudio clouds sidebar that got dropped.

They’re not sharing the link because it’s actually a fantastic piece of
journalism and once you read it you get a picture for just how damning this
is.

~~~
bdcravens
I've read the article (and shared it on Twitter) and I would agree.

What I mean was, why are they saying Rstudio distributed the article?

~~~
awinder
As far as I can tell (haven’t read datacamps legal complaint and it’s not
clear anything has been filed), some members of the named groups tweeted and
posted blogs with links to the buzzfeed write up.

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wyxuan
DataCamp pretty much took every wrong turn possible in this story, and I don’t
feel like this action is justified. In addition, I’m not sure that rstudio is
a competitor to DataCamp.

~~~
osipov
Unfortunately the small but passionate R community is taking a hit while
DataCamp and RStudio are duking it out. It was hard enough to advocate for R
vs. Python and this controversy makes it worse. No one likes to join
communities where leading figures are at each other's throats.

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webel0
Can someone explain how RStudio is a competitor to datacamp?

Have briefly used RStudio IDE in past but don’t follow them or datacamp very
closely.

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bjl
What a terrible look for Datacamp.

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villgax
Yeah right. There's no way DataCamp is getting its reputation cleaned with a
defamation suit. How is reporting an internal incident defamation by any
means.

~~~
boublepop
The article goes through this. The claim is that RStudio knowingly pushed
false information about the incident even after DaraCamp reached out to them
to correct factual inaccuracies and false claims clears up by the independent
third party investigation.

Reporting on an internal incident isn’t defamation in and of itself, but if
you knowingly sprees lies about the incident to damage the reputation of a
competitor, then it is.

~~~
inetsee
The article states that the initial "independent third party investigation"
was not all that independent. The investigation was done by an investor who
had put a substantial amount of money into DataCamp.

~~~
data_ramp
There were two "independent third party investigations".

The first was carried out quietly by an investor in early 2018, long before
DataCamp initially acknowledged this. This is the investigation referenced
here: [https://www.datacamp.com/community/blog/note-to-our-
communit...](https://www.datacamp.com/community/blog/note-to-our-communit..).

The second was carried out by a contractor as a response to the initial
outcry. This has been sometimes referred to as an "investigation", but its
authors frame it as a "review" targeted at helping DataCamp correct workplace
issues. You can read the report here:
[https://www.datacamp.com/community/blog/working-ideal-
indepe...](https://www.datacamp.com/community/blog/working-ideal-indepe..).

As far as I can tell, neither of these processes concluded anything that
contradicted the BuzzFeed article in any significant way. The contractor's
report concludes "there is little factual dispute about what happened". Since
DataCamp's most recent post isn't specific about what factual disputes exist
now, I guess we're in the dark about that.

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santa_boy
This appears to be a pretty bad move from DataCamp. The original incident put
DataCamp in pretty bad light at that time. I feel the reputation actually
recovered pretty well since then.

I'm a premium member of DataCamp for 2-3 years and also an avid user of
Rstudio and a fan of many of their staff.

I may be missing what the CEO is referring to but I haven't seen much
disparagement of DataCamp by Rstudio.

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TechBro8615
The CEO doth protest too much, methinks.

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bJGVygG7MQVF8c
DataCamp did nothing wrong.

