Development | Indigobo

About & Subscribe

On the first Saturday of each month at Reformer's tree at 3pm at meeting point 2 (see www.eizland.com), I am there to provide people who are interested in learning the following languages free consultation about learning: English, Russian, Latin, French, Ancient Greek, Arabic, Ukrainian, Polish, Kazakh, Mandarin Chinese, German and Welsh.

One of the leading sites in the UK for organising meeting takes down event. Why? And are the grounds they have used dangerous?

Read further...

The importance of a means of being able to arrange events without the internet.

I believe it is important that it is important to organise meetings in a democratic society: this raises the importance of Schelling points.

Meetup is a site that some people refer to as a defence to the argument that it is difficult for anyone to just organise a meeting for people to attend in London. Read below to see what happened.

After paying for a meeting organiser account, my event was taken down. Meetup suggests you advertise your event on social media. I have objections to the uses of some of the dominant forms of social media, particularly due to its negative effects.

After posting the event, a few days later it got taken down. See below for the text of the meetup I posted and extracts from the message I got saying why the meeting had been completely removed from the site.

TEXT USED:

EVENT DETAILS: Hyde Park, Reformers Tree, 3.30pm, Saturday 4th October

TITLE: Get started in Russian, Ukrainian or Polish from scratch!

My name is David, I was born in the UK and lived in Russia for seven years. I speak Russian language fluently, speak intermediate Polish and know the very basics of Ukrainian. I have won debating competitions in Russian (and have an enormous amount of language books).

Many people are scared off starting some of these languages. They don’t know where to start. They don’t want to make the investment of signing up for courses. While I was lucky enough to start learning Russian in my teens at school, a lot of progress I have made in these languages is through self-study.

I believe there are many people in London who:

Are interested in starting to learn one of these languages from scratch;
Would like to meet regularly with someone in London to review the very basics they have learned / ask questions.

I realise there is a bit of a barrier, both in London and online for those who are thinking of getting started in one of these languages. Instead of signing up to a paid course, many just want to attend a free event with someone who can help them explore Russian, Ukrainian and Polish.

So, I decided to offer myself and my language resources to help get people off the ground.

Why am I doing this?

I think it is great that people in the UK learn these languages. (I understand not everyone attends a private school and has the opportunity to be taught the fundamentals of Russian and Latin.)

At this stage, I am just offering to meet with others to advise you on getting started so that one day you might be ready to progress in one of these languages to holding basic conversations with native speakers.

Turn up at this famous location in Hyde Park where I will be wearing a white T shirt with ‘Join a Conversation’. If you are not a complete beginner, please email me on david@eiz.global with a bit more information about your level, so I can prepare advice on what are the best resources to progress to the next level.

If you are a complete beginner and just want to explore the idea of starting your own studies in Ukrainian, Polish or Russian, this event is for you. Just turn up!

[end of text]

MESSAGE I RECEIVED:

Dear [X]

We're contacting you about your Meetup group, Get started in Russian, Ukrainian or Polish from scratch!.

We reviewed your Meetup group and determined that it does not align with our Community Guidelines. Your group doesn't encourage people to connect in meaningful ways. Meetup's mission is to empower personal growth through real human connections—so there needs to be an opportunity for people to interact in meaningful ways at every event. Check out our community guidelines to learn more about what we mean by this.

We became aware of this violation through our own proactive content moderation efforts.

As a result, this group has been closed and taken off of Meetup.

Meetup

END OF MESSAGE RECEIVED

I understand that the site wants to control quality. However, the idea that dominant internet providers do not cut access off to people who have things that are not the most popular and that the service is accessible to everyone unless they are breaking the law is generally taken as a given. This type of what I would call democratic censorship - restricting the ability of some people to organise certain types of well-meaning events is dangerous.

Keep visiting www.eizland.com for more updates on this project.