[djb_hackernews]

That is a pretty dramatic response to Meetup deleting a group.

I've never created a group, but it seems the event WAS outside of the intended use of Meetup. It looks like poster was trying to use it to host a single event where Meetup wants you to create groups that meet and communicate regularly. To me, it looks like the poster was indeed using Meetup as a listing service.

I think the telling piece of information that was left out is what the questions Meetup suggested asking yourself before creating a group.

But yea, this isn't as near big a deal as the poster is making it out to be.

[lnanek2]

They probably get a constant amount of spammers making fake meetups to collect information from people who sign up. That's why they delete them so easily. Much like how Google kicks people out of AdWords so easily because people are always signing up and getting robots to click ads, bans them on Google Groups so easily, etc.. I can get banned on Google Groups just by opening a bunch of tabs to read later. Makes me look too much like a bot.

[whichdan]

It's still surprising that the data was deleted instead of internally flagged.

[PommeDeTerre]

How do you know that the data have actually been deleted?

The excerpt from the (apparently edited) Meetup response merely says, "Once a Meetup Group has been removed from the site, it's final."

That doesn't say anything at all about the state of the data. It may just be that they don't want to have to deal with appeals when groups are removed, so their policy is to make all removals final, even if the data are left untouched.

[talkingquickly]

That makes a lot of sense, I hadn't considered that it might be a decision based on the high support costs of ever entering into negotiations rather than a technical limitation or process issue.

[whichdan]

That's a good point; on Meetup's scale, they probably deal with a large amount of similar disputes. It's still a shame that they don't make exceptions for cases like this.