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Comment by drakonka | Hacker News Reader

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/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.

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From mumphster's transcripts linked in the children (drmjg is the Livecoding.tv CEO):

   slateytv: you look childish and irresponsible for releasing her full name and company
   drmjg: As mentioned above her account really has nothing interesting on it. so there is no reason not to even delete it.
   [...]
   ellbot: also why the hell would you edit her profile to show her work and personal information to the public
   slateytv: are you unable to delete accounts?
   ellbot: do you not get how childish and evil that is
   drmjg: oh no. #1 we can but as you know is not like we go and delete each account instantly as 80% of users who requests account deletion come back after two weeks to requests their account back and are mad we deleted it
   drmjg: #2 people who requested account deletion in pasts used the accounts for credit card fraud and then re-create new ones.

This is the weirdest attempt at a runaround I've seen in awhile.

Man, if I were an investor I'd be doing anything I possibly could to eject this guy.

Sad. This person has obviously divorced reality. Shocking that a simple account deletion request could reveal so much. Whether his reaction was a product of pent-up frustration over normal growth challenges or a singular (now ongoing) display of gross immaturity, he has irreparably damaged his company.

It's getting weirder. They've just responded to everyone who mentioned this debacle on twitter, saying that it's all resolved and all the posters on HN are spammers, banned users, and competitors.

I'm none of the above.

Go on guys, dig yourselves a deeper hole, you'll hit bedrock soon.

The twitter account needs to STOP POSTING.

https://twitter.com/livecodingtv

It's honestly baffling how they think that keeping on posting is in anyway a good idea, especially when they say things like "most people are banned users or competitors" - demonstrably untrue - most people are not users of livestreaming, and are not competitors, and a couple of people they've "identified" (doxxed, really) have been incorrectly identified.

Watching their exchanges - they (Michael, clearly) are acutely insane.

I feel for the guy, as his world-view is so incredibly warped he seems to be unable to even conceive of the fact that he might be mishandling this grievously.

If I were him, I'd step away from the keyboard, and hire a PR firm NOW to try to sort out this mess.

If I were PG, I'd be kicking his ass from here 'til next Tuesday for being mindblowingly irresponsible with both the investment given and his employees' livelihoods, and I'd be pushing for a strong customer-facing hire.

Time for a dramatic "drop the microphone and walk off stage" moment, I agree. If only to put a period on the entire conversation and attempt to stop the bleeding.

Yeah. Apparently he doesn't understand you can build a system that soft-deletes accounts then hard-deletes them in N days.

hes still chatting by the way. https://www.livecoding.tv/ell/ if anyone would like to ask the CEO of the site any questions while I wait for my account to really be deleted.

Can't view the transcript without an account.

A good hilight: http://pastie.org/10523598

> even going extra miles and telling users not to use misogynistic words on their channels.

That's... that's... wow. Just wow.

This is a part of the transcript: http://pastie.org/10523576

Very immature CEO.

Wow, the title of profile page is now

* Marked for removal from database - in PHP programming language *

Curious what they're doing right now..

I'm not sure, but whatever it is, it's in PHP programming language!

Could their support "team" be an automated agent proof of concept gone terribly, terribly wrong? /s

Did they outsource all of their dev and administration to some cheap outfit?

Looks like it's finally a 404.

Wow, it is! After all this time, I've never been so happy to see a 404.

Not sure if someone recreated your account for laughs but it's up again with the same spamming accusation in the profile.

That's a good point, I suppose it's possible someone just recreated it as a joke. At this point I wouldn't put it past either the CEO _or_ some random internet troll.

Yeah, once you're at the point where someone can't distinguish your behavior from that of a troll, well...

At any rate, they should have done something to prevent anyone from registering with your username. Even if it's just a one off redirect on their reverse proxy/gateway.

And I was able to just send myself a password reset request, so looks like they just put in a rewrite or something.

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!

Was it you personally or the "support team" that dealt with this case? I expect you to implement a delete-feature today. This is a marketing disaster.

Thanks for copy and pasting your email to me. Here is a copy-paste of my response to you:

"Hi Michael,

I wish you would stop trying to mislead me, to be honest.

"we even deleted all your videos, and disabled your account" - no you did not. I deleted all of my videos myself, one by one, when I asked for my account to be deleted (before you changed my password and put in a redirect to home on login). I did this just in case there was any problem, and now I'm glad I did.

Second, it took much more than 11 days to get it resolved, I'm not sure what time frame you are counting from? In addition it is not even resolved - I was again able to reset my password under an hour ago (or have you deleted my account since then? My apologies if so, I can test again although I have to say with everything that's happened at this point it seems more likely you would just change my email so I can't send myself a password reset instead of deleting my account)

I really don't want to talk on the phone, nor an Amazon gift card. I just want you to stop trying to lie to me, libel my profile, and acting so unprofessionally. The one thing I wanted was to just have my account deleted, I do not know why this is so hard for you guys.

Kind regards,

Liza"

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"?

"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."

You didn't address the most concerning issue: the fact that you put that psychotic outrage on her profile. Explain yourself.

Your cofounder specifically mentioned that you made those comments, not your presumably fictional support team. Are you lying or is your cofounder?

Michael, you're acting like a man-child, and you're now in the process of offending twitter.

Where do you think this is going to end?

If I were your investor (and I am an investor in startups, as well as a founder of a now decade old company), I would be moving for a vote of no confidence in you, and fast.

"We will send you an Amazon gift card to soothe things a bit." Now that goes to show how serious you're in solving this saga. This is comedy gold according to my dictionary.

grabs popcorn Yup, some good entertainment. Also, what was the amount on the Amazon gift card? We _must_ know.

I declined the gift card offer in my reply, so we will never know.

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