Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChrisArchitect | Hacker News Reader

Medialab's other things include like, Genius (ok, fair enough, sustains itself / useful/ well-used I'm assuming)....and Kik? The teen messaging app from like 2010 that no one uses anymore? hm

Had to look a bit harder to even find their website (https://www.medialab.la/) - 'a holding company of consumer internet brands' heh, sheesh, yeah that's not sketchy.

View on HN

>Had to look a bit harder to even find their website (https://www.medialab.la/) - 'a holding company of consumer internet brands' heh, sheesh, yeah that's not sketchy.

I find it curious that there's no page about who owns/runs MediaLab. Not even a single blurb about their executives/management!

To save others looking it up: `.la` is the ccTLD of Laos. They're using it here to mean "Los Angeles", of course, but I hadn't seen that one before :)

So are they Chinese or Japanese?

Edit: To anyone who doesn't get the joke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_CaZ4EAexQ

According to their public Statement of Information (https://businesssearch.sos.ca.gov/Document/RetrievePDF?Id=04...), the CEO of MediaLab.AI Inc is Michael Heyward, the co-founder of Whisper.

MediaLab probably got Kik at a pretty big discount. There were child grooming issues, and at one point they did an ICO and subsequently got fined by the SEC.

They were also indirectly responsible for the whole leftpad disaster lol.

Are you talking about NPM leftpad that broke Node? Is there any place where I can read more about this claim?

This thread should help - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11349870

> Kik? The teen messaging app from like 2010 that no one uses anymore?

I use to think the same thing, until I listened to this episode of Darknet Diaries:

https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/93/

1/3 American Teenagers use the app according to Kik... I have a feeling they're not counting right because that doesn't sound right to me.

After reading this, it's clear everybody knows (multiple legal challenges, involvement by MS...) and nobody with actual power wants to crack down on it. Safe haven or not, when authorities want to destroy a sketchy business, they have a number of weapons at their disposal. To me, it all suggests Kik (and by extension, possibly, Medialab) might well be some sort of law-enforcement front at this point.

>Kik? The teen messaging app from like 2010 that no one uses anymore?

It's not "none uses anymore" anymore, it's widely used for nefarious and degenerate sexual solicitation and shit like that.

Hey, before you judge them, note that their stated goal is: "to enrich and empower consumers in their everyday lives...through expansion and acquisitions."

All I can think of is that silicon valley tech disrupt bit. "We're making the world a better place...through paxos algorithms for consensus protocols."

oh the Genius acquisition was also (announced) today?! wow someone just went shopping eh?

Edit: Sorry missed that was news from the 16th:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28550527

Just a note, we're getting close to fiscal year end (9/30) for a lot of companies. Maybe totally anecdotal but I've noticed in the past that I see a lot of these kinds of announcements this time of year presumably to get these done before the next fiscal year.

Kik's the website that had a serious child porn and child sexual solicitation problem. I think they've tried to do something about that in the last couple of years but from a quick Google search it's not clear it's really worked.

It's probably worth a lot more as a honeypot than it was before.

The fact that Imgur doesn't care to link to Medialab in their statement makes it even more sketchy.

Normal procedure seems to be that each company links to the other companys statement on the deal.

Also, are we sure they're not "joining Medialab", most Silicon Vally type companies always state that their joining some other company. Not Imgur, nope straight up acquired, which is at least honest.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com