Semi related, but has anyone else noticed a massive surge in Meetup comment spam in the last few months? All my local groups are pumping out spam, mostly offering work from home employment opportunities. I keep wondering what has changed.

Meetup was bought by Bending Spoons (after a winding path getting passed around after it being sold to WeWork). They’re basically just running it until the wheels fall off.

Bending Spoons are the same people who bought and then systematically abused and violated poor Evernote.

Bending Spoons is a weird beast. Nobody likes them and nobody likes working for them, but they are loved by capital markets - they seem to have an endless stream of money coming in to finance acquisitions. They will buy anything, strip it down to bare essentials, jack up prices, and leave it running to generate cash for as long as it can, until it dies of natural death. There is little or no pretension of innovation, just value-extraction distilled into purest form.

Oracle should buy them, they'd fit together perfectly.

I'm reminded of executioners. Nobody likes executioners, not even the people hiring them. But if you live in a society that needs lots of dirty work done, then you kind of need a guy like that around. Think of Luca Brasi from "The Godfather", for example. Despised but tolerated because he's useful.

Yeah, every time I'm on Meetup I see those ads at the end of the sign up. The same thing happened with Poshmark now too. After I purchase something on Poshmark I get spammed with three ads. Like the same ad provider I mean, same deal.

Yep I have been in one group for years then in the last month I start getting spam emails from comments on the group