A few years back I sensed an opportunity to create a meetup competitor that would solve many of the biggest pain points for users and organizers. While putting together our business plan, we realized that politics had seeped into general culture too deeply to be able to run a lean ship. Everything would have to be moderated.
What do you do when the KKK wants a meetup? Ok, that seems easy but what about the League of the South? The Sons of the Confederacy? The Nation of Islam? Or what do you do when the Tidewater Democrats declare the Coastal Republicans to be a hate group and want them banned? Or the local Libertarians wanting Citizens for Gun Control kicked off the site? Or how do you handle stalkers who think meetups are their personal hunting grounds? What about trolls who leave inappropriate comments everywhere? There are so many situations that require the owners to step in that are difficult to impossible to automate. Even if you're making good and consistent decisions, that's still lots of manual work and dealing with constant PR issues. Meetup no doubt has a team that takes care of these issues but those salaries add up quickly and there's not much room for efficiency of scale.
You could try being hands off but you'd get slaughtered in the press for allowing anything outside of the current narrow definition of socially acceptable humans. Any service open to the public ultimately has to have a group who polices the service, not only to the wishes of the owners, but also to those of the loudest voices in the greater social context.
What do you do when the KKK wants a meetup? Ok, that seems easy but what about the League of the South? The Sons of the Confederacy? The Nation of Islam? Or what do you do when the Tidewater Democrats declare the Coastal Republicans to be a hate group and want them banned? Or the local Libertarians wanting Citizens for Gun Control kicked off the site? Or how do you handle stalkers who think meetups are their personal hunting grounds? What about trolls who leave inappropriate comments everywhere? There are so many situations that require the owners to step in that are difficult to impossible to automate. Even if you're making good and consistent decisions, that's still lots of manual work and dealing with constant PR issues. Meetup no doubt has a team that takes care of these issues but those salaries add up quickly and there's not much room for efficiency of scale.
You could try being hands off but you'd get slaughtered in the press for allowing anything outside of the current narrow definition of socially acceptable humans. Any service open to the public ultimately has to have a group who polices the service, not only to the wishes of the owners, but also to those of the loudest voices in the greater social context.