They are the biggest scam in India capitalizing on FOMO of Indian parents. They charge heaftily (more than $2000) to teach app development (using Scratch, Firebase etc.). Their staff is poorly paid and just reads off scripts. Their staff doesn't know even the basics of CS (as evidenced in this video: https://youtu.be/1Y21eSn_zSM?t=64, when the student asks how files are stored in Cloud Storage, she says the files are stored in real clouds. There's another where the teacher can't tell the difference between Java and Javascript)
Their ads are highly misleading and straight up false with made up names of students who earned millions of dollars in salary while their fellow peers are playing Cricket. (https://in.news.yahoo.com/wolf-gupta-byju-whitehat-jr-090945...). You can imagine the effect this will have parents (especially in India where parents are known be super competitive).
This guy, Pradeep Poonia, has been actively campaigning against them. His youtube channels were taken down, Quora account was taken down, Twitter, even Reddit (if i'm not wrong). His current youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdv4_YNXrIQtGHSVXnY-1mg) has lot of videos on this.
He especially has a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN1DOE7GoYw) where he accessed their internal slack (shady I know, but even Whitehat Jr is also not playing fair) and showed their organized effort into suppressing online dissent by fake twitter accounts, trolling etc.
WhiteHatJr was recently acquired by another firm Byju's (whose CEO is the plaintiff in this lawsuit) that also does the same thing, but for entire school curriculum.
In a world, where there is Khan Academy, they sell their subpar product at a very high price, exploiting Indian parents' ignorance and willingness to do anything for their kids education.
Some years ago, when I started getting into machine learning, I couldn't tell he is a fraud. Considering that just before he was broadly exposed as a fraudster, he was invited by the European Space Agency (ESA) to give a talk, I was in good company. I think the only reason he got exposed is because he started making stupidly bold claims, attributing high-profile original research to himself. If it weren't for this, he would probably still be accepted by the mainstream because the case a few experts could make against him wouldn't be strong enough.
My point is: it is hard to see what is fraud and what isn't. If the ESA can't tell the difference, how can average parents?
I have fond memories of a visit to a children’s hostel in Hyderabad, India in 2006, and a rote answer they were taught in their textbooks:
“Why is a computer called a number cruncher?”
“A computer is called a number cruncher because it crunches numbers with its teeth.”
Dad took the children to the office where there was a computer and showed them that it had no teeth.
I’m glad to say that the children don’t go to that school any more, and that I haven’t found such egregious errors in textbooks for any subject more recently (I’m over there again at present), and there is less rote in their education than there was, though still more than is ideal as it’s hard when the teachers and students are all used to that method.
FWIW. Since you've mentioned Byju's... my Indian friend here informed me that they have a nexus with the Google Playstore team too and bypassing all Playstore policies. For instance, they release a free app without any in-app purchase; but after some time, they'll lock the app and will call the parents to pay 50k rupees.
Yeah I am from India. I think we could have guessed this is the ultimate stage of IIT JEE rat race that's getting more and more aggressive over some years.
While I don't subscribe to all ideologies of socialism, I can only think of free high-quality education by government as a solution to this aggressive game-the-system and FOMO mentality so deep rooted here.
For context I studied in Rural Governement schools till 10th and even after that I didn't have to pay 20% of what an average Urban "Middle class" peer pays for education. The education quality is not much different. Only when I had to study engineering I came across stupid expensive not-worth-the-cost education.
Pathetic. All this dude did was show users their fake ads and fake reviews. He's also showcased reviews where the instructors don't seem to know much about how the internet works.
Now the legal system is being used to maliciously prosecute him. There is little hope for this man in India given the level of corruption and rot in the system. If there are well connected folks in the west who want to spend their time on actual injustice as opposed to casting in Hollywood movies and other first world problems, I'd invite them to speak up for this man and contact the investors / folks at Disney and other Byju's investors.
Also if you know folks at Reddit or YouTube congratulate them on having such a trash tier DMCA review process where a decent man with the intention of protecting a gullible population of poor folks can't stand up to a scam corporation backed by a mammoth like Disney, on your platform.
Rarely am I the one to stand up for Google, but the DMCA is such a garbage law that they have no choice. They don't have the legal ability to call bullshit on the takedown. It's the video creator's job under the DMCA to prove themselves innocent, under penalty of perjury. (No such penalty exists for filing a false claim, BTW.)
The prosecution made a few decent points - I suspect he may have gotten carried away in some of his videos and crossed a line somewhere which was very foolish.
The truth is much worse than this suggests: This recent article in The Morning Context gives a lot more detail as to why this company is absolutely unethical: https://themorningcontext.com/indias-whitehatjr-is-startup-h... [Requires sign in to read unfortunately]
WhiteHat Jr. is the sleaziest company to emerge from India's start-up ecosystem. They have used underhanded and unethical means to take down fair criticism online. They have used misleading and outright false advertising to sell their product to parents.
I can only hope that people wake up to how evil this company is.
The apparent success that WhiteHat enjoyed with a $300 million exit within 18 months of founding has unfortunately inspired the current generation of entrepreneurs in India to also try their hands in the edtech space over everything else.
Most of them however don't know the scale of the fraud and unimaginably shady marketing and operating practices WhiteHat engaged in to reach that valuation.
This is nothing new. Another scammer called Ankit Fadia has been doing very similar stuff under the name of "Ethical hacking courses" for many many years now.
He has been exposed many times (see his Wikipedia page) but most parents and students don't know much about the person running the business and fall for stupid ploys like "Employed by FBI to hack Osama" or some paid TV apperance and end up paying thousands of dollars to such companies / individuals.
Thanks for mentioning this fraudster. That dude legit conned everybody at the time because Internet was fairly new to India. Here's one of my favorite pages on the internet exposing the charlatan that he is:
Big ad companies and media houses need to put pressure against false advertisement. I have not seen a single article by any indian newspaper on this topic.
Offtopic-I would like this to blow up disproportionately because the only way whitehatjr is gonna backoff is because of a media backlash
I have had my personal stint with trying to "expose" an Indian startup (I am an Indian), also coding related which gained some traction on LinkedIn (around 500+ reactions, if they mean anything).
This guy is in serious danger, trust me. I had to delete my linkedin post when my ex-manager called me to delete it otherwise the startup's employees will go crazy and try every which way to make my life hell.
Unfortunately, thats what you get in living in this country and trying to voice your opinion (without any strong political and financial credentials).
I have mentioned this earlier, people keep complaining of "brain drain" here in India as tech graduates keep leaving India for opportunities abroad; I thought I won't be that one and will do something for the country; it's just too difficult, I have add enough, I can't wait to leave.
I always tell people to just be anonymous, having your personal identity linked when saying anything remotely offensive is just an open invitation for personal attacks and things like this.
It's gonna get worse. Criminal Defamation laws in India put the onus on the defendant (Poonia, dont know legal terms) to show that he did not defame the company, or to show that he did it in interest of public good. They are skewed towards the company or the person alleging defamation. In other countries its the person alleging that needs to prove that he was defamed unfairly.
As I mentioned in another thread, these EdTech companies from India seem to have a nexus with Google. My friend tells me that Google India is very aggressive on advertising and for a decent budget they'll bend any policies.
EdTech in India is a huge mess. My mom was the principal of a high school for about 12 years and has first hand knowledge of the kind of overt corruption companies engage in to get a school contract signed. It is a huge and booming market and everyone wants to cash in through the shortest route possible - cheat and bribe.
It teaches coding to kids of age 6 charging upto 1500$ for 100 clases.
To sum up, this is very high amount from any standar, parents take loan to fund this. Second, they use black hat marketing tactics claiming 10year old student now earns million of dollars.
I'm not sure if there tactics are even legal. Platforms like FB, Google should fact-check on ads.
Seriously how can you believe a kid is earning 10mn$ a year. And has no mention anywhere on the web.
Looks like they made the classic Streisand effect mistake - attempts to clamp down on critical voices brought more attention to them. For a startup that ramped up and exited so quickly, they don't seem particularly smart.
Notwithstanding the marketing, I don't think the product itself is egregious. Their primary sell is teaching logic ("coding") to kids through 1:1 tutoring sessions. Many Indian upper/middle class households already send their kids to in-person tutors at a very young age, and looks like Whitehat Jr found a niche that could cater to that market during the pandemic.
1:1 tutoring can be highly effective, creating a 2-sigma improvement in student performance (http://web.mit.edu/5.95/readings/bloom-two-sigma.pdf). Of course, Whitehat Jr likely doesn't follow specific structured pedagogy to get this advantage, and maybe the target age group is too young to get any benefits.
> Their primary sell is teaching logic.
No their primary sell is to instruct things one by one by reading a literal script. They literally have a standardized script to read to the kids. Things like drag and drop icons and stuff on an already open source website code.org. They do not teach anything. They just tell the kid what to do and make them feel that its done by them.
>1:1 tutoring can be highly effective, creating a 2 sigma improvement.
Agreed, they do, but not when majority of teachers they recruit don't even need to know coding to teach coding. Some teachers are literally housewives trying to make an income during this pandemic teaching coding without knowing anything remotely related to computers. I don't think circumstances like these will create a 2-sigma improvements in students. ;)
Founders, hiring managers in this group can play a big role in stopping this fraud. Maybe we should publicly call out WhieHat Jr in our job postings? A single statement like "A degree from WhiteJat Jr. won't impact your chances of getting hired" can go a long way.
Instead of refuting the claims with evidence, this company prefers to take down content which criticizes them. Clearly, they have no leg to stand on and have resorted to bullying.
So typical that all the social media platforms are complicit in their little scheme. All of them are happy to silence this guy who is pointing out blatant fraud and corruption without a second thought. Broken copyright system once again a major player.
Why do we allow these massively profitable companies get away with this crap?
Current title on HN: Indian Startup WhiteHatJr files suit against reviewer exposing fake ads
Title on article: WhiteHat Jr and the curious case of disappearing dissent
Actual subject matter: an entity abusing YouTube’s copyright systems to suppress negative comments on their advertisements (giving examples of one case of fun mockery and one finding inconsistencies in allegations made by the ads), and YouTube handling things typically badly.
I see no mention whatsoever of WhiteHat Jr filing suit, and the article is much more about the abuse of the Content ID system and copyright law than about whether the ads make illegitimate claims (though it’s certainly not painting WhiteHat Jr in a favourable light even apart from their attempts at suppression of dissent).
Yeah, I used to live in a shared accommodation with many of their newly hired Civil Engineers for sales/business development roles. They had to close a family at the end of the day as part of their target, usually in the same neighbourhood. All of them got fed up & left en-masse in a few months.
[+] [-] tempstar|5 years ago|reply
Their ads are highly misleading and straight up false with made up names of students who earned millions of dollars in salary while their fellow peers are playing Cricket. (https://in.news.yahoo.com/wolf-gupta-byju-whitehat-jr-090945...). You can imagine the effect this will have parents (especially in India where parents are known be super competitive).
This guy, Pradeep Poonia, has been actively campaigning against them. His youtube channels were taken down, Quora account was taken down, Twitter, even Reddit (if i'm not wrong). His current youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdv4_YNXrIQtGHSVXnY-1mg) has lot of videos on this.
He especially has a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN1DOE7GoYw) where he accessed their internal slack (shady I know, but even Whitehat Jr is also not playing fair) and showed their organized effort into suppressing online dissent by fake twitter accounts, trolling etc.
WhiteHatJr was recently acquired by another firm Byju's (whose CEO is the plaintiff in this lawsuit) that also does the same thing, but for entire school curriculum.
In a world, where there is Khan Academy, they sell their subpar product at a very high price, exploiting Indian parents' ignorance and willingness to do anything for their kids education.
[+] [-] timkam|5 years ago|reply
Some years ago, when I started getting into machine learning, I couldn't tell he is a fraud. Considering that just before he was broadly exposed as a fraudster, he was invited by the European Space Agency (ESA) to give a talk, I was in good company. I think the only reason he got exposed is because he started making stupidly bold claims, attributing high-profile original research to himself. If it weren't for this, he would probably still be accepted by the mainstream because the case a few experts could make against him wouldn't be strong enough.
My point is: it is hard to see what is fraud and what isn't. If the ESA can't tell the difference, how can average parents?
[+] [-] chrismorgan|5 years ago|reply
I have fond memories of a visit to a children’s hostel in Hyderabad, India in 2006, and a rote answer they were taught in their textbooks:
“Why is a computer called a number cruncher?”
“A computer is called a number cruncher because it crunches numbers with its teeth.”
Dad took the children to the office where there was a computer and showed them that it had no teeth.
I’m glad to say that the children don’t go to that school any more, and that I haven’t found such egregious errors in textbooks for any subject more recently (I’m over there again at present), and there is less rote in their education than there was, though still more than is ideal as it’s hard when the teachers and students are all used to that method.
[+] [-] johnx123-up|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dilawar|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kowlo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] higerordermap|5 years ago|reply
While I don't subscribe to all ideologies of socialism, I can only think of free high-quality education by government as a solution to this aggressive game-the-system and FOMO mentality so deep rooted here.
For context I studied in Rural Governement schools till 10th and even after that I didn't have to pay 20% of what an average Urban "Middle class" peer pays for education. The education quality is not much different. Only when I had to study engineering I came across stupid expensive not-worth-the-cost education.
[+] [-] known|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dfrtgaswiokhtbz|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] fareesh|5 years ago|reply
Now the legal system is being used to maliciously prosecute him. There is little hope for this man in India given the level of corruption and rot in the system. If there are well connected folks in the west who want to spend their time on actual injustice as opposed to casting in Hollywood movies and other first world problems, I'd invite them to speak up for this man and contact the investors / folks at Disney and other Byju's investors.
Also if you know folks at Reddit or YouTube congratulate them on having such a trash tier DMCA review process where a decent man with the intention of protecting a gullible population of poor folks can't stand up to a scam corporation backed by a mammoth like Disney, on your platform.
[+] [-] paledot|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swiley|5 years ago|reply
1) YouTube being the only place people go to watch videos online
2) These awful DMCA takedown processes.
[+] [-] fareesh|5 years ago|reply
See: https://twitter.com/LiveLawIndia/status/1330743572157534210
The prosecution made a few decent points - I suspect he may have gotten carried away in some of his videos and crossed a line somewhere which was very foolish.
[+] [-] fareesh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] essdas|5 years ago|reply
WhiteHat Jr. is the sleaziest company to emerge from India's start-up ecosystem. They have used underhanded and unethical means to take down fair criticism online. They have used misleading and outright false advertising to sell their product to parents.
I can only hope that people wake up to how evil this company is.
[+] [-] flak48|5 years ago|reply
Most of them however don't know the scale of the fraud and unimaginably shady marketing and operating practices WhiteHat engaged in to reach that valuation.
[+] [-] _4570|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghoomketu|5 years ago|reply
He has been exposed many times (see his Wikipedia page) but most parents and students don't know much about the person running the business and fall for stupid ploys like "Employed by FBI to hack Osama" or some paid TV apperance and end up paying thousands of dollars to such companies / individuals.
[+] [-] gadnuk|5 years ago|reply
http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/ankit_fadia/
[+] [-] DarmokJalad1701|5 years ago|reply
I remember getting one of his books on "Ethical Hacking" and found it completely pointless.
[+] [-] Alterlife|5 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/whiteHatSnr/status/1330455721897443329/p...
Shame on Whitehatjr and on Byju's. This is outright fraud.
[+] [-] _Microft|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shi314|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] h43k3r|5 years ago|reply
A good writeup by Forbes.
Big ad companies and media houses need to put pressure against false advertisement. I have not seen a single article by any indian newspaper on this topic.
Offtopic-I would like this to blow up disproportionately because the only way whitehatjr is gonna backoff is because of a media backlash
[+] [-] saimiam|5 years ago|reply
https://thetechportal.com/2020/10/28/byjus-owned-whitehat-jr...
[+] [-] villgax|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pulkitsh1234|5 years ago|reply
This guy is in serious danger, trust me. I had to delete my linkedin post when my ex-manager called me to delete it otherwise the startup's employees will go crazy and try every which way to make my life hell.
Unfortunately, thats what you get in living in this country and trying to voice your opinion (without any strong political and financial credentials).
I have mentioned this earlier, people keep complaining of "brain drain" here in India as tech graduates keep leaving India for opportunities abroad; I thought I won't be that one and will do something for the country; it's just too difficult, I have add enough, I can't wait to leave.
I always tell people to just be anonymous, having your personal identity linked when saying anything remotely offensive is just an open invitation for personal attacks and things like this.
[+] [-] ffpip|5 years ago|reply
WhiteHatJr's ads are complete BS. They advertise that a 9 year old kid (wolf gupta, yes that is apparently his real name) got a job at Google
[+] [-] ankit219|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sokoloff|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mandeepj|5 years ago|reply
Is n’t 18 the legal age to be employed in the corporate world?
[+] [-] johnx123-up|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Karupan|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hudixt|5 years ago|reply
It teaches coding to kids of age 6 charging upto 1500$ for 100 clases.
To sum up, this is very high amount from any standar, parents take loan to fund this. Second, they use black hat marketing tactics claiming 10year old student now earns million of dollars.
I'm not sure if there tactics are even legal. Platforms like FB, Google should fact-check on ads.
Seriously how can you believe a kid is earning 10mn$ a year. And has no mention anywhere on the web.
[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
(Submitted URL was https://nextbigwhat.com/whitehatjr-files-20-cr-defamation-ca... but it contains no extra info. More explanation at bottom of this page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25176990.)
[+] [-] ashleshbiradar|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rainingcatndogs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blueblisters|5 years ago|reply
Notwithstanding the marketing, I don't think the product itself is egregious. Their primary sell is teaching logic ("coding") to kids through 1:1 tutoring sessions. Many Indian upper/middle class households already send their kids to in-person tutors at a very young age, and looks like Whitehat Jr found a niche that could cater to that market during the pandemic.
1:1 tutoring can be highly effective, creating a 2-sigma improvement in student performance (http://web.mit.edu/5.95/readings/bloom-two-sigma.pdf). Of course, Whitehat Jr likely doesn't follow specific structured pedagogy to get this advantage, and maybe the target age group is too young to get any benefits.
[+] [-] shmde|5 years ago|reply
>1:1 tutoring can be highly effective, creating a 2 sigma improvement.
Agreed, they do, but not when majority of teachers they recruit don't even need to know coding to teach coding. Some teachers are literally housewives trying to make an income during this pandemic teaching coding without knowing anything remotely related to computers. I don't think circumstances like these will create a 2-sigma improvements in students. ;)
[+] [-] soumyadeb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] villgax|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] infinityplus1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bavell|5 years ago|reply
Why do we allow these massively profitable companies get away with this crap?
[+] [-] chrismorgan|5 years ago|reply
Title on article: WhiteHat Jr and the curious case of disappearing dissent
Actual subject matter: an entity abusing YouTube’s copyright systems to suppress negative comments on their advertisements (giving examples of one case of fun mockery and one finding inconsistencies in allegations made by the ads), and YouTube handling things typically badly.
I see no mention whatsoever of WhiteHat Jr filing suit, and the article is much more about the abuse of the Content ID system and copyright law than about whether the ads make illegitimate claims (though it’s certainly not painting WhiteHat Jr in a favourable light even apart from their attempts at suppression of dissent).
[+] [-] pja|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IceWreck|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bavell|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blackoil|5 years ago|reply
Unfortunately any dissent is limited to social media as Indian media will peddle whatever the advertisers/government want them to say.
[+] [-] villgax|5 years ago|reply