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, 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-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) has lot of videos on this.
He especially has a video (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.
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?
Not just the ESA, India's most prestigious college IIT-Bombay also fell for him. The roster usually includes folks like Stroustrup, Vint Cerf etc & then a couple years ago 'Siraj Raval' of all the people on earth.
I have fond memories of a visit to a children’s hostel in Hyderabad, India in 2006, and a rote answer they were taught in their textbooks:
“Why is a computer called a number cruncher?”
“A computer is called a number cruncher because it crunches numbers with its teeth.”
Dad took the children to the office where there was a computer and showed them that it had no teeth.
I’m glad to say that the children don’t go to that school any more, and that I haven’t found such egregious errors in textbooks for any subject more recently (I’m over there again at present), and there is less rote in their education than there was, though still more than is ideal as it’s hard when the teachers and students are all used to that method.
There are well designed, carefully planned and high quality textbooks by NCERT, which is part of the school board.
But many students and parents don't prefer them. There is a proliferation of 'cut-to-the-chase' guidebooks (similar to Cliffnotes but much much worse) that they use to cram before the exam. What you describe is very likely one of these.
OT, so briefly: I'm interested in the possibility of applying much greater than usual domain expertise to create science education content which is more correct and insightful, focused on integrated transferable understanding. An unresolved challenge is how to make such available in a form and setting that actually gets it used. A quick check of the NCERT science textbooks turns up error and opportunity for improvement. So, is there some setting in which one might say "for NCERT class foo, book Science, chapter bar, here is a free correcting-and-extending supplement", and potentially see significant use? Tnx...
Sure, this will be great. Please do not assume that NCERT textbook writers are careless tyros - they include some of the best educators in India who have spent time in improving presentation of material - of course, there may be errors and gaps, and there is always scope for improvement. (For example, Fields Medallists like Manjul Bharghava are at least peripherally interested (1))
If you are earnest, you can contact people in the math and science community in India. This will mean substantially thorough vetting, because the corrections will themselves have to be checked across multiple sources for consistency. (The worst examples are in Chemistry. As you keep digging, you will start finding that B.Sc. material contradicts High School material, and M.Sc. material confirms the High School material. None of these are "incorrect", it is a matter of how deep one wants to go.)
A good place to start will be to look at the list of editors listed inside the textbook, look up their webpages and try them one after the other.
Thanks! Less briefly (the front page having moved on)...
> tyros [...] best educators
How to explain... The publisher of a cell biology tome of a textbook, praised their hundred-ish authors, and I half-seriously quipped, "Great! And how many for the second page?" Or... It seems every decade or so, some astronomy professor emeritus goes around suggesting it's embarrassing that in a field with an unusual focus on introductory textbooks, mostly authored by astronomy professors, the coverage of what color the Sun is, is so incoherent, that even most first-tier astronomy graduate students have it wrong. Despite being trivially explainable to a 5-year old. Hasn't changed yet. I chatted with a leading astronomy education researcher and educator, and my impression was they'd given up on near-term large-scale change. Or... Can one see an atomic nucleus with naked eye? To get the correct, rather than the 'almost always correct but not here' answer, and learn of a photo, you need someone with a research focus on nucleus dynamics. It's a small subfield, and if MIT has anyone, I didn't easily find them. So my quip is "MIT in isolation lacks the physics domain expertise to easily create an awesome childrens' picture book about atoms".
My suggestion is that transformatively better science education content is possible, but creating it would seemingly require collaboration on a scope more similar to that of the original science research, than of current informal artisanal handicraft authorship with a smattering of science education research.
And that's before hitting bottlenecks like a "yeah, that would be an insightful way to teach this topic... but my students are taking the medical school entrance exam soon, and it only tests for superficial understanding here, and our time together is limited, so I'd be doing my students a disservice if I didn't focus on the what they need for the test, lest they're years of dreams and effort go for naught".
> try them [editors] one after the other
A (US) OER astronomy text has a nice online ticket database for errata. The text did the usual getting the color of the Sun wrong. Folks pointed that out. It received a common remedy - just enough of a tweak that if you already know the correct answer, you can closely read the unclear text as not being wrong. But with no hope at all that students are getting it. Last I saw, the ticket was, despite criticism, tagged 'good enough, WONTFIX'.
So there are a lot of needles I can't move, or are not worth my pushing on.
Now maybe there's some part of the Indian education community with a greater emphasis than these, on non-rote non-test deep transferable understanding of the physical world? I'd love to hear of it.
But my current thought is to target early primary with supplemental material. Teaching things far earlier than they're usually taught (escaping teaching to tests), and better enough that the misconceptions avoided can pay for the effort cost.
In the US, parts of the homeschooling community might be receptive. One tactic might be to create a supplement for a text already in widespread use. The mention of NCERT texts, had me wondering if there was somewhere one might say fruitfully drop a pdf, "Oh, you're using NCERT's solar system intro? Yeah, it has the color of the Sun wrong. It will be easier for you to understand light and color if we fix that - here you go... Oh, and that bit about planetary heat coming from the Sun? Well, ok, but it's more understandable if we explicitly mention cold space, and here's a nice example of ...".
> Chemistry [...] contradicts
Yeah. Chemistry education research describes chemistry education content using adjectives like "incoherent", and as leaving both students and teachers steeped in misconceptions. A fun US state curriculum spec required teaching both "atoms are conserved by chemical reactions" and "atoms are electrically neutral - when charged, they become instead ions" - two historical threads of definition, presented together for the entanglement and drowning of students. Years back, there was a fun letter from the editor of a chem ed journal, that was a plea "yes it needs to be gutted, but there's value too here which we should preserve...". Sigh.
Given the severely challenging constraints and incentives around textbooks, it seems to me unlikely that "talk to the textbook authors" can be a path towards transformative improvement in science education content. In any country. All the existing Sun diagrams might be revised perhaps, but adding helpful examples, or a treatment of scale, simply won't fit there. So I wondered what opportunities for workarounds might exist in an Indian context? Perhaps analogous to some homeschooling mailinglists in the US? (And if anyone has favorites, I'd love to hear of them). Thanks again.
a major problem is that teachers are using these "crambooks" too when setting exam questions so basically you get a leg up when you study from them vs the official coursebooks.
you'll literally see the same questions there so obv it's easier to study from that than from the coursebooks
source: experienced this in my math classes in the CBSE board of education from india
a friend of my parents in Bombay changed his kid's school because not only did the teacher set homework and tests from the guidebooks, but would not accept any other answer than what the book supplied. original work was marked wrong.
Third grade textbooks in late 90s in Kochi, India teach us that a CPU has an Arithemetic Logic Unit and a Control Unit. A light pen is an input device that can be held againt a Video Display Unit. They repeat this for a few years.
Huh, until now I've only ever thought of "number cruncher" as a euphemism for "processes numbers rapidly like a creature crunching through food".
But, now you say this ... early 'computers' (eg adding machines) of course did have teeth (they used mechanical gears) and would literally be 'number crunchers' and so would fit a description of "crunches numbers with it's teeth" as a literal term.
Now, a number cruncher in UK English is used to refer to a person, like an accountant: I suppose in the past they crunched numbers using mathematical machines (analogue calculators).
Also, of note is that originally a 'computer' was a job role of someone operating a mathematical machine.
Obviously then a 'computer' became the machine, and it still 'crunched numbers' except it did it silently using transistors.
It sounds like that textbook was not wrong but perhaps just needed explanation.
FWIW. Since you've mentioned Byju's... my Indian friend here informed me that they have a nexus with the Google Playstore team too and bypassing all Playstore policies. For instance, they release a free app without any in-app purchase; but after some time, they'll lock the app and will call the parents to pay 50k rupees.
yup, BYJU is getting CRAZY amounts of support in India and no major newspaper questions their claims.
there are a lot of conspiracy theories about why it is so - some people say it is coz they have political support
Edit: just a brand ambassador. He's still complicit in misleading millions of Indian kids.
Edit2: the techcrunch article shows a picture of Karan Bajaj (WhiteHatJr founder) with Baba Ramdev, so it's very possible that they have political backing.
Doesn't seem so, it's just a PR/Legal team with a lot more money & head in the ground attitude towards people seeing through their lies & reporting it.
Check the reviewer's twitter. He has shared slack threads where the marketing Execs ask the entire channel to brigade & report his tweets/linkedin posts/YouTube videos without any copyrighted content as well.
WhiteHat Jr. abuses the DMCA and copyright policies to take down accounts and content. There was this article [1] where they detailed it really well (its a long article and requires login)
> It seems that fairly early on, WhiteHat Jr figured out that it can create temporary nuisance for everyone by reporting their video as a copyright or trademark infringement. Which is why after say, 15-30 days, several of Poonia’s videos were reinstated, after having been taken down.
Yeah I am from India. I think we could have guessed this is the ultimate stage of IIT JEE rat race that's getting more and more aggressive over some years.
While I don't subscribe to all ideologies of socialism, I can only think of free high-quality education by government as a solution to this aggressive game-the-system and FOMO mentality so deep rooted here.
For context I studied in Rural Governement schools till 10th and even after that I didn't have to pay 20% of what an average Urban "Middle class" peer pays for education. The education quality is not much different. Only when I had to study engineering I came across stupid expensive not-worth-the-cost education.
A lot of the stress associated with IIT JEE stems from aggressive fear based propaganda by coaching classes. Things were much more laid back in the 90s, pre-Kota mania. Fear sells. They make it sound as though if you are not in an IIT, your life will be a flaming wreck.
This is far from the case, even if you confine yourself to the tech sector.
>I can only think of free high-quality education by government as a solution to this aggressive game-the-system and FOMO mentality so deep rooted here.
I am also from India and I am really perplexed and pained by this. Why is it not possible to have a genuine business catering to the same market but with actually good content and trained teachers? If nothing else, WhiteHat Jr has demonstrated that there IS a market and people are willing to pay for educational content. A genuine company might take more time to succeed, but they will eventually win the war, right?
Why are we perennially doomed to be stuck with either scammy companies like these or the mai-baap government doing everything under the sun? The free market seems to be able to solve these problems in other countries. What makes India so unique?
The sheer population in competition I guess, gaming the system is almost always the way to win. This is true everywhere but more pronounced in India, because we have very large number of people very eager to game the process. Maybe it's a culture thing, or just the effect of competition and FOMO, idk. (The coaching mania so fierce in North is less aggressive in South)
When I was studying K-12 or PUC or whatever it's called, Byju's (the company that acquired WJR) was doing most aggressive promotions. There were a few similar education startups putting genuine effort but way less aggressive promotion. I liked the content of one of those startups called Toppr. I never went to purchase anything, tbh (I was a rural student), but the quality doesn't necessarily win.
The entire coaching ecosystem is also like this. They teach lot of formulae and shortcuts. These years success in IIT-JEE is a combination of super hard work and having access to highly expensive coaching material. (Tbh, as a rural student, I dropped the dreams of getting into one of these "good" institutes halfway because of this).
Whitehat JR is just misusing FOMO of urban Indian parents. I don't think pushing programming on children of 7-8 years is worth it. Instead it needs to be properly taught at high-school level.
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.
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.)
My understanding is that once the content creator file a counter notice, the hosting platform is off the hook and free to reinstate the content. Any further legal fight will be directly between the claimant and the creator, not involving the host at all. IANAL, so feel free to point out any mistakes in this take.
Now assuming the above to be true, YouTube has rejected a counter notice by the creator. What other reason exists for such a decision, than the commercial relationship between the two companies? This shows that content creators have no priority at all. The host is likely a willing partner in this abuse.
So hypothetically you are suggesting that someone like Nigel Farage or the Brexit Party could just file DMCA requests against any YouTuber who has made a video critical of them, and YouTube and Reddit would have to suspend the accounts because they're at the mercy of DMCA?
If that were true how come this isn't happening all the time? I know it happens often, but not universally. It seems like this is the easiest way of killing dissent and criticism. How come the folks who have the most criticism levelled against them haven't figured out this tactic if the law is so flawed? How is it that it only happens in some cases but not others? If the law is broken why doesn't everyone exploit it?
I suspect that you are right that DMCA is a flawed law but I think in this particular case there may be more to it than just these companies being at the mercy of a broken law.
Because not everyone is scummy, and it's obvious that they would be in the wrong? I also imagine something attention grabbing like a western politician will get more care taken than some random educational company in India.
AIUI that's not correct. You can ignore a DMCA takedown notice but you lose the common carrier protections and effectively become open to being sued for contributory infringement. They have a choice, they have the legal ability but eschew the liability that exercising that ability carries.
>Rarely am I the one to stand up for Google, but the DMCA is such a garbage law that they have no choice.
First of all, Youtube with their ContentID circus goes far beyond what the DMCA requires. The DMCA requires you take down content once you receive a proper notice with all the required elements. It does not mandate that you proactively scan all video and audio as ContentID does (but other jurisdictions may have such mandates).
And then, they have a choice. They can reject DMCA notices. This opens them up to potential liability when they do, if the other party decides to sue them and wins. Thus they probably will consider it a bad choice. It's so much easier and "safer" just to accept every bullshit notice for them. But it's a choice regardless.
Github recently rejected the DMCA notice from the RIAA (it took them a while but they got there eventually); at least I am not aware of any counter notice filed and mandatory wait period elapsing afterwards.
Try filing a DMCA against google.com and see if Alphabet takes down that page ;)
No, they will have their lawyers look at the notice and laugh it out of the room, instead of blindly accepting a notice like that.
>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.)
No, it's actually not. The process is this:
1) Party A sends DMCA notice to Company
2) Company (such as Youtube) receives notice, checks if it conforms with the law[0], removes content and informs the affected party if it does, details what is missing to party A (if possible) otherwise.
3) Affected party B may file a counter-notice now if their content got taken down.
4) Company receives counter-notice, checks the formalities and informs the original party A it received one.
5) Original party A has now 10 business days to file a court action against the alleged infringing party. If it does so, it has to notify the company.
6) Company will restore access to the content after 10 business days (14 at most), unless the original party A files a court action and notifies company about this action.
If it goes to court, the original party will have to prove their copyright was indeed infringement, and if it can, then the other party can still mount a defense, such as a fair use defense.
If it's a nuisance DMCA notice without merit, and if the alleged infringer files a counter-notice, nothing has to be proven, the content will be reinstated (after up to 14 long days), unless the complaining party is actually willing and bold enough to waste their time and money, and the courts time, and files an action.
Of course, this is not how YouTube and their ContentID does it; they heavily disadvantage whoever has content taken down/de-monitized/"revenue shared", and they actually make judgments on counter-notices themselves (not just looking at formal requirements of such a notice).
[0] Or not. As somebody handling DMCA notices on a daily basis, I have seen many, clearly templated notices from medium and major companies which are very incomplete or outright inaccurate. One "DMCA as a service" company likes to file notices for user-uploaded content that has been removed from our servers months ago, sometimes years ago. A lot of companies also forget to mention what they want removed, or better yet send us notices giving links to other domains we do not own, do not control and are not affiliated with in any way; while this is mostly human error, we had one company respond to us that they expect us to remove the content regardless... yeah, let me just hack that other server real quick for you...
> If the subscriber serves a counter notification
complying with statutory requirements, including a statement under penalty of perjury
that the material was removed or disabled through mistake or misidentification...
Not sure what you're disagreeing with me on here, since you go on to restate my point at greater length. There are penalties for falsely filing a counternotice; there are no penalties to me if I send Alphabet a DMCA claim about Google.com (or if WhiteHatJr files notice to YouTube).
Edit: Ah, I see. It's correct that there is no need to provide evidence at the counter-notice stage, but it introduces a sentence of up to five years in prison just for lying in the counter-notice, which does not exist for the filer. Also, even if the everything is filed and processed in a matter of hours from notice to counter-notice, there is a 14-day period during which your material remains offline regardless.
It is indeed lopsided that the counter notice must include "A statement under penalty of perjury that the subscriber has a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled." The initial notice only has "under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed", but everything else like "A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law" has no threat of penalty.
But you don't have to be right about the mistaken removal, just honestly believing you're right about it at the time you file the counter notice.
Oh, and you'd be surprised on how many people perjure themselves in the initial takedown notice, knowing they are not in fact authorized by copyright owners, often even claiming they own the copyright when they know they do not.
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.
The prosecution made a few decent points - I suspect he may have gotten carried away in some of his videos and crossed a line somewhere which was very foolish.
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-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.
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.
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.
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:
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
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.
The baseline level of self-awareness in people here is off the scale when you compare it to the typical Indian. People actually queue, instead of creating a melee at every counter. You're never worrying about people cutting you in lines. Cars stop at zebra crossings to let pedestrians cross. No one honks! They nod and smile "bonjour!" as they cross you on the street. There is no pollution here. The food is great, the coffee is even better, the $5 wine at your local grocery store is some of the best in the world. The employees you'll work with have some basic dignity and shame. If they don't know something, they'll admit it. They won't grossly lie on their resumes. You'll never hear the words "do the needful" or "prepone" or, my most hated "kindly revert back"! There is a basic amount of honesty here. You don't spend all your time worrying if the guy you're doing business with is fleecing you. You will find information about businesses online.
This place is as close to paradise as it gets on planet Earth.
Life, and especially youth, passes by in an instance. I highly advocate keeping this fact in mind in the face of do-gooders who judge you for your choices. The million small and large quality of life improvements lead to exactly that. A vastly higher quality of life.
I'm a native-born Canadian, married to a woman who was born in Bangladesh. I'm blown away by how much this list reads like an exact point-for-point description of why she moved here. (Except for the part about the $5 wine.)
You can use almost the same description for Brazil. Reading it made me relate 90% to even the small issues (honking, respecting pedestrians on pedestrian crossings and so on).
I think it's more of a common theme to unequal and impoverished countries where enforcement of law is tenuous at best and people don't trust others. If trust collapses everyone only cares about themselves and their loved ones, if bribing a police officer will help your kid to get out of a DUI... So be it, you will be considered an idiot if you don't do what the rest of society does, whatever small corruption or abuse that is. Because people know they will get away with it so why hinder yourself for such a thing as moral and values?
I know it's a very broad generalisation of huge societies, unfortunately it's my experience growing up in Brazil and why I can't ever live there again.
You'd be surprised to experience firsthand how low values like integrity, ownership and shame rank for an overwhelming majority of people. The general rule of thumb is "get by, somehow, anyhow". Another trait is having little to no perspective on what a higher quality of life entails. It is awful, and depressing.
A handful of people who are hurt and frustrated by this, share the same sentiment as the parent comment.
I am an American in California working as a Project Manager at a small ~30 person eCommerce "engine" startup. One of my new colleagues on the PM team is a very nice Indian girl and she always says "do the needful" in JIRA tickets and in general email communication. Before she joined the team about 2 months ago I never once in my life heard anyone in America say "do the needful". I am American and have lived here my entire life. I always thought the saying was slightly funny and almost "cute" in that no native American English speaker ever describes tasks to be done as being "needful".
Likely of British origin, during the Raj. I can imagine "Kindly do the needful, old chap" scrawled in the margin of an official missive, as it languidly flitted from one administrative table to another.
Many such anachronisms exist; thankfully, they're dying out one by one. A few decades ago (in the last century, to be precise), it wasn't very uncommon for official letters to be signed off with "I remain, Sir, your obedient servant". Later, it was shortened to "yours obediently"; it vanished altogether, thankfully.
It comes partly from the language, bureaucracy uses and expects in communication, given India's socialist history , weak market place pre 92 and strong presence of government owned businesses even today , it likely many of the their parents and grandparents worked in the bureaucracy, so it also learnt and home and also schools are poor at teaching soft skills like written communication or anything which won't help you ace exams and get a job.
It is also partly from workplace culture and what their mentors and bosses did when they were junior, somewhat akin to the polite language you hear in the U.S. South. You can pick up mannerisms easily, when you are not sure what is the right way to behave.
Not sure exactly what its origins are, but it's standard Indian English. It's a legitimate dialect of English, just like standard American English has its own unique idioms like "grandfathered in" (a term that has extremely racist origins).
Edit, for other's curious, as the person I'm replying to said, it's not racist per se, but has its origins in racist practice:
> The term originated in late nineteenth-century legislation and constitutional amendments passed by a number of U.S. Southern states, which created new requirements for literacy tests, payment of poll taxes, and/or residency and property restrictions to register to vote. States in some cases exempted those whose ancestors (grandfathers) had the right to vote before the American Civil War, or as of a particular date, from such requirements. The intent and effect of such rules was to prevent African-American former slaves and their descendants from voting, but without denying poor and illiterate whites the right to vote.
I'm always learning. I truly thought that the term was probably centuries old and had something to do with family legacy, old rules being followed to keep tradition, etc. You live, you learn.
I often hear people use the phrase "call a spade a spade", thinking it's saying "if a card shows a spade, call it as a spade (when showing the hand)", but I've heard for a long time that phrase is also racist. Not growing up around anyone who ever used that phrase, I would have had no idea.
Makes me wonder how many other phrases out there in every day use don't have a happy meaning, even though at first glance they might seem innocuous.
Similar to "chink in one's armor. A "chink" means "a narrow opening or crack", and a chink in one's armor means a weak point that makes you vulnerable to attack.
But "chink" is also an offensive term for a Chinese person, so "chink in one's armor" can be misunderstood, especially if what you are talking about actually involves a Chinese person. ESPN got in trouble a couple of times with it, even though they had used it thousands of times before without incident, because of a couple articles where the weakness they were describing on some team was a player who was Chinese.
> You'll never hear the words "do the needful" or "prepone" or, my most hated "kindly revert back"!
I hear your complaints. But does this really deserve a mention as a reason not to live in India? Are you really this upset over a few phrases that has no material impact on your life? Seems a bit pretentious.
It’s used by nearly everyone, not just babus. The memes in fact originate from engineers in India interacting with their international colleagues. In any case, it’s not something worth getting upset about.
I don’t think I’m missing the point, which is those phrases are used widely enough that they don’t signify babudom. It’s common workplace English and has no wider context than “it’s just Indian English”, not in this day at least.
Fair enough that what is worth getting upset about for me doesn’t apply to others.
Not the poster, but when I actively think about it, I use common sense, ask for clarification, use some imagination, and a reasonable margin of error (imo). Then I try to judge the situation/reaction.
Without that, the word overreaction is meaningless.
What is your social life like? I worry that post 30, starting a social life from scratch might be too much, especially for someone who is admittedly not particularly social.
I did arrive here a bit before 30, but I've been pretty lucky with it. In fairness, most of my friends are from work, so I got lucky. I've also been able to find love here.
I firmly believe that if you go to a country eager to impose your own culture and your own way of doing things, you'll see friction. If you're open-minded and willing to attempt to integrate, you'll find even a little bit goes a long way, and the locals will willingly meet you halfway.
As a 24-yr-old looking to emigrate within the next year or so, I couldn't agree more with your take.
I feel India as a country (I know I'm homogenizing India; but I feel exceptions are rare, if any) has decayed to a point where there's pretty much no hope left for folks with progressive views looking to lead a life (especially one with intellectual pursuits) on their own terms instead of conforming to incredibly regressive stuff that an overbearing "society" constantly howls into your ears with a bullhorn.
What options can you take for immigration?
I am curious as well as I am an Undergrad aged 20 who wants to live in different countries (especially EU and Canada).
I was thinking of taking a masters as I can then make connections.
Are there any other ways which can be taken?
I can comment wrt the United States, as I already have members of my family there who've established themselves there for a few decades now.
The most common route would be going there for Master's degree (MS or equivalent) and then later finding a job either before or immediately after graduating from your course.
But you can also try other avenues like directly trying for a job via work visa, get someone to sponsor you (via an immigration petition -- but you need a present a valid argument for this and also find someone you trust who've established themselves there), or find a partner there with whom you're willing to cohabitate.
I'd highly recommend trying for EU/Canada (as you mentioned yourself), Aus/NZ over the United States of America-- at least for the next few years until something resembling an immigration reform takes place -- unless if you have folks in the States who're willing to sponsor you or get you a good, well-paying H1B job.
I am sure it will be hard for India to come up to that level if people just keep leaving for greener pastures. Europe didn’t get to be Europe by doing that. Of course it’s your choice to leave, I don’t know it somehow smells bad to my value system, but that’s just my problem.
If enough people keep landing in Europe like this, I am pretty sure sooner or later, Europeans will be upset. It’s inevitable and human nature. Fixing your own place is better than crashing at somebody else’s.
To an extent, they are. But most of the conversation here seems to be about refugees and asylum seekers rather than legal immigrants. It helps that I'm more than willing to adopt the European way of life: fashion, food, work-life balance and all the rest of it.
As to your first point, that was the crux of my post. I no longer care (nor am offended by, mind you!) whether you judge me or not. I know how much vitriol coursed through my veins every day I was in Chennai, Bangalore, Delhi etc. And I know how much more at peace I am in France. I am a better human because of it; kinder, more useful to society etc. I would not trade any of it for more abstract notions of whether Europeans as a whole will be upset by the wider trends.
> And I know how much more at peace I am in France. I am a better human because of it; kinder, more useful to society etc.
At the risk of judging you, are you sure you are kinder? You just wrote a paragraph about “the typical Indian” in a fairly condescending tone and how you get upset over trivial things like “Indian English” phrases.
It’s okay to not like the Indian lifestyle, not everyone has to, even if you are Indian. But please give people a chance and be less judgmental in order to actually practice kindness. Kindness isn't selectively applied to the people whose lifestyle you like.
Haha, fair enough, you mentioned it twice now, so I concede that I might be kinder, but I'm still not kind per se! I suppose I was burnt by a youth spent yearning to escape and hence the reactions. I promise I'm pretty harmless in real life :)
Again, I hear you and relate to a lot of things you said. As I get older though, those things seem trivial and I’ve learnt not to idolize one culture/lifestyle over others. You realize that’s just the way people are in that part of the world and it’s not due to malice.
I wouldn't be too sure about it not being due to malice. All too often, what is plentiful is treated with contempt and not respected. One thing that is available in plenty in this side of the world is human capital. I'll leave you the dots to be joined.
It's not just the "lower tech companies", btw. It depends on many factors which include but are not limited to, prevailing company culture, your immediate manager, the existence of an implicit (or explicit) cabal that calls the shots in your team -- which cabal could well exist because its members passed out of the same three-letter institute, say ...
Which is just a long-winded way of saying that your soul is liable to be crushed in any kind of company in India if you have the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It sounds like you have immigrated perfectly. I always assumed that by the next generation, people are basically locals if their parents immigrated well. You're an example that it also works well within one generation.
But many european people who lean against open immigration policies will not make the rational distinction between you and someone who has not intergrated very well, and will instead judge you based on e.g. your skin color or your last name.
Laudable sentiments indeed. Could you also expound a little on _how_ exactly you expect the parent(s) to "fix their own place"?
Not everyone has to be a revolutionary. It is indeed human to tire of the fight, and equally human to want to live life without having to fight all the way.
It is easy indeed to judge everybody else on the basis of (y)our value system; it is harder to walk a few steps in the other person's shoes.
It's funny that that reminded me of James Damore. After his memo, there was I think an NYT article interviewing some women at Google's campus about their thoughts. One of them said something to the effect of "I just like to code, I'm not doing it to be revolutionary", but she was almost forced to take a position just through circumstances.
Being forced to take a position by circumstances beyond one's control is an unfortunate situation to be in. Worse still is being judged for it -- especially in a discussion without nuance. Moving past these events (and more) takes a fair bit of effort.
There’s an element of truth to this: in the 19th century a substantial number of Irish republicans found refuge in the US – enough to invade Canada! [1]
In the case of Australia, the trouble-makers were sent there against their will.
You could also consider coming to America, but I’m not exactly sure why.
It might be our strip malls, fetish with our slave owning past, white supremest president, anti-science pro-gun culture, or our vast obesity and narcissism.
But somehow in all of that, I still love living here.
The Ultimate Frisbee is great, lots of creative people, and we are starting to decriminalize psychedelics.
India has strip malls, a Hindu-supremiscist Prime Minister, a huge and powerful anti-science culture, and, last but not least, around eight million people living in modern slavery.
> The Global Slavery Index estimates that on any given day in 2016 there were nearly 8 million people living in modern slavery in India. In terms of prevalence of modern slavery in India, there were 6.1 victims for every thousand people.
I've lived in a poor country and also in a few of the wealthiest nations on Earth.
IMHO first you become rich, then once you have time in your hands to actually think about improving things, you do just that.
Becoming rich in a corruption-ridden country, however, tends to be next to impossible for the few honest people living in such place... so it's really difficult for enough honest people to become wealthy enough to start pushing for change to improve not only their own lives, but also that of those who are less privileged.
If you do manage to push beyond such threshold, however, I believe most people will start benefitting from the generosity of their fellow citizens, and slowly start to behave accordingly, i.e. politely and honestly and just kindly. Once you get there, it seems this new level of kindness in society tends to self-sustain, and that's when you know a country has become part of the "first world".
It's rare, though... I believe the latest example is South Korea, which has become a very advanced nation in just a few decades... wish there were other examples, but I'm not aware of any others besides perhaps China - but China does not exactly have a population and government I would decribe as "kind" :/ but I think they will get there eventually.
"IMHO first you become rich, then once you have time in your hands to actually think about improving things, you do just that."
'rich' -> 'improving things' are the same thing.
Individuals can 'get rich' just by being corrupt.
But a nation generally cannot.
Yes, natural resources will help, but they are never the true basis for progress, because without civility, the wealth generated from the resources will be fleeting.
Domestic consumption is generally the only long-term 'stay rich' strategy and it depends to a high degree on civility.
Saudi Arabia can do as they please and remain rich for a while, but it's not sustainable.
Canada, Australia can get a 'jumpstart' and have a 'cushion' due to natural resources but even then it's not obvious.
Most of Africa is rich in natural resources and they are poor, it's mostly a systematic issue.
> 'rich' -> 'improving things' are the same thing.
I meant "improving things" not just for yourself, but for your community. Most rich people in poor country don't give a shit about their community, to the contrary, they exploit them as much as they can without giving anything back.
IMO, it is the population and resource density that makes the difference in human behavior. I have seen densely populated, resource stretched cities in the west that will put an Indian city to shame in bad road traffic behavior.
And from the other side, there are remote mountain towns in the Himalayas full of some of the kindest, most hospitable people ever. So perhaps being packed like sardines isn't an optimal human state.
I have to agree with the assertion. The political will to change anything decreases with the number of people in the area. It's hard to break compatibility between versions when you have a language used by almost everyone (javascript) vs when you are a new hippie lang.
China seems to be the only exception here with PRC having draconian control over everything.
'Population Density' is a civic function, not some random variable.
Like many things, it's a random variable when there is no civic function, but once it exists, then it's part of 'planning' aka 'generating wealth' in whatever terms that means for a group of people.
How does a township with 50% unemployment also have garbage lying about everywhere? The marginal cost of employing people to at least collect is minimal. A town with 50% unemployment is extremely rich in excess labour capacity, they should be able to hire people cheaply.'
Why not? Because social organization is probably abysmal.
You have made some great points but stop shitting on Indian English. I don't like it either but you are coming off as an elitist shitting on people who are taught these phrases growing up.
I understand why that bit was provocative but please don't escalate into flamewar. It helps no one and just makes the thread worse. Besides, helmholtz already more or less took it back.
Eh, in hindsight, maybe I should have left out that part since it detracts from my other point. It's just an aesthetic thing. For instance, I really don't like the word 'purposely'. I never saw it used before the internet came about, and 'purposefully' and 'on purpose' worked perfectly well for me. I'm sure it's correct, but it just rubs me the wrong way.
Hahaha guilty as charged, and now I'm outside the HN editing limits. That's what happens when you try to type at the speed of thought. Serves me right, I guess.
This isn't a throwaway. I've been lurking HN for a while and never felt the need to comment before now. In retrospect that was a bit silly since OP has been pretty nice in all of their follow up comments. I still feel that while their criticisms are generally valid, they're a bit harsh.
For those not in the UK, the pearl-clutching here is about an incident where a bunch of teens had a fight in the 13th largest city in the country and four ended up stabbed. None dead (at the moment) and it is headline news here. I would invite the Americans in the audience to imagine a world where a gang fight that left four kids stabbed in Fort Worth, Tx was national news.
Yeah, let me tell you about what a dangerous shithole this place is becoming.... /s
National, no. But four teens getting stabbed in a single incident might very well be news in most of Texas, which is only about half the population of the entire UK, and well over half the population of England proper.
Four teens getting shot but not killed in gang-related activity would possibly make the eleven o’clock news but probably not make the front page of the large urban papers in Texas, certainly not national news. For a stabbing? No chance.
Good on you for trying. FWIW a general rule of thumb that I've discovered is that it's more worthwhile to listen to the doers than the talkers. And certainly don't be misled by the guys who tell you to sacrifice for the common good when they will not.
There is no racial tie to any place. As an Indian you have no more of a responsibility to improve India than you do France. You didn't choose that, you were just born there. That's like me mowing your lawn and then asking you to pay me whatever fee I came up with. India birthed you. But India did not first ask.
And whether the Europeans like you there or not is also irrelevant. You are a free agent. It's probably smart to be liked and to be useful but beyond that residence there is not a gift, it's a value exchange. No one would do that if they didn't get something from it (in aggregate).
Look out for yourself. Everything else will naturally come from that.
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.
> anonymous whistleblowing/exposes of shady business practices becomes a thing
We need this so much, the guy who started this in fact was posting anonymously, but all his accounts from Reddit, to twitter got taken down following which he was forced to use his real identity and the developments the past few weeks followed.
>1. anonymous whistleblowing/exposes of shady business practices becomes a thing
Then companies will use this to post fake "reports" about their competitors to damage their reputations. This is a societal issue, technological solutions do not solve societal issues.
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.
There are various cases where the onus is on book writer or publisher to show the intent was good faith and not defamation. Look at the case of The Wire v Arnab Goswami a couple of years back, or even the current Priya Ramani case. This is not a well known fact and thats what makes life difficult in India.
> Going through the provisions of Section 499, it is clear that the accused has to not only prove that his/her statement is true but also made in the ‘public interest’, a phrase that is as vague as they come.
One mistake I made when i wrote this was that I wasnt aware if this is a Civil Defamation or a Criminal defamation. Frankly, I dont know the difference even now, just that these two exist as a sheer legacy of British laws and govt never moved to correct them.
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.
As I mentioned in another thread, these EdTech companies from India seem to have a nexus with Google. My friend tells me that Google India is very aggressive on advertising and for a decent budget they'll bend any policies.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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). 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.
> 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. ;)
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.
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.
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.
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?
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).
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.
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).
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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_fi...
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'.
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.
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.
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
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.
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...
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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-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) has lot of videos on this.
He especially has a video (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.