As many of you know, MeetUp.com will soon be charging organizers nearly $20/month for the privilege of organizing meetings, with the expectation that they pass this cost on to their group. Since most "organizers" are probably reluctant, but do it anyway, this is just another burden. Also, they will have to pay each and every month to *try* to organize a meet, whether one happens or not.
They say that this is a good price for the service. I find this to be baloney. I pay ~$20/month to my hosting provider, and get 7680 MB of storage plus 192 GB of data transfer per month, which is definitely a better value than the dubious privilege of emailing people and begging them to RSVP for a meeting so it can be scheduled.
So, I have quit MeetUp, and remove my login from their system, lest they suddenly decide that I'm the organizer of a group and thus have to pay them money. Yes, it's a protest. Yes, I will no longer get notified of the MeetUps in my area (I only was subscribed to 4). But I really can't bring myself to be a part of something which dumps the organizing responsibility on a volunteer, and then expects the volunteer to front the money for the privilege. I won't be part of the process of screwing over a volunteer that way, regardless of how they say that the person can recover the cost.
Knee jerk? Maybe. But it really, really seems like an abusive situation to me, and I don't want to be part of it.
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