Banned From Mahalo

Mahalo's manner of banning people from their site for speaking out against policies they are not in favor of is outrageous.  People should have the right to disagree with Mahalo without fear of retaliation and banishment.  This is people's income that they're dealing with, and they do not care.  All Jason Calacanis cares about is how fat his bank account is getting.  He just wants his "sheeple" to keep pushing out pages so that he can make another million dollars.



Just to sum up what I've posted so far . . .

1. I became one of Mahalo's top earners as a page manager.
2. I belonged to Mahalo Mavens, the How To Team, the QC Team, and Sports with M.
3. In February 2010 one of my pages was revoked for failing update it in time.
4. In April 2010 one of my pages was revoked for not having enough words in the video description, even though this requirement was not mentioned in the Mahalo Page Management Guide.
5. In April 2010 Mahalo bans my account after I make a public complaint against Mahalo for revoking pages.

I did not violate Mahalo's Terms of Service.  There is nothing in their TOS that says you cannot make a public complaint against them or say anything negative about Mahalo. They simply banned my account because they were butt hurt about my negative comment. They also removed my post from Mahalo Answers, when is why I decided to send an email out to the various Mahalo email distribution lists that I am a regular recipient of. I wanted to make people aware of what Mahalo was doing to its members. So on April 6, 2010, I sent out the following email called "Shame on Mahalo" to Jason Calacanis, Mahalo staff, and Mahalo team members:

Wow, banned within an hour of disagreeing with how Mahalo does business. Maybe you should add that to the Terms of Service. Don't disagree with us, or we'll ban your account.

Well, for those of you who don't know what I'm referring to, I posted the below message on Mahalo Answers, and Mahalo banned my account for it. I have been a trusted user on Mahalo for quite some time, and in fact, I was included in Mahalo Mavens, the How To Team, the QC Team, and even the Sports with M team. But by disagreeing with Mahalo, I am now the scum of society.

Well, all I have to say is "shame on you Mahalo".

(See my previous blog post for the Mahalo Answers post that was removed.)

Jason Calacanis's reply to me:

The staff has decided that they are not interested in working with you going forward. Good luck in your future efforts.

My reply to Jason Calacanis:

The "staff" decided, huh? How coincidental that it happened right after I posted my disagreement.

Jason Calacanis's reply to me:

According to the team your performance was very low compared to other members of the community.

Additionally, your lack of professionalism and responsiveness to their requests for updates resulted in your banning.

We wish you well in your future projects.

My final reply to Jason Calacanis:

You should really just admit that you banned me because I disagreed with Mahalo and called you out on it. At least that would be the "transparent" thing to do. Because I have all my emails with direct questions and my direct answers to show that I have always responded to my direct questions. I have an Excel spreadsheet with all my managed pages to track my word count and updates. And the only "lack of professionalism" that you would be able to point to would be that fact that I disagreed with the great and powerful wizard.... I mean Mahalo. And if voicing your disapproval of something is considered unprofessional, then I don't know how we got as far as we did in this country.

After sending that email, I was surprised by how many responses I received from people that had had similar experiences, or that felt Mahalo's treatment towards me was wrong. Many members asked that their emails be kept confidential, for fear of retaliation from Mahalo, so I will not disclose who the emails are from, but here are just a few quotes from the emails that I received:

"I'm sorry to hear about your problem with Mahalo. I know you are one of the top page managers in terms of earning especially when it comes to the earnings/page ratio. I am always sad when one of the top users or staff leave Mahalo."

"I've seen some of your great work.... I just claimed [some of your pages] as I saw that they have no manager, but I feel dirty after all the hard work the [you] put in!"

"How does it work exactly? Technically, I thought you own this content."

"Best of luck going forward. You seem to be a great writer - there must be other opportunities for you."

"It has become evident how trigger friendly Mahalo has become at banning people."

"Four of my pages (coincidentally some of my top earning pages) were also revoked without warning."

"To BAN someone because you're criticizing Mahalo? That's outrageous!"

"What has happened to you is extremely unfair."

"I no longer act in the 'best interest of Mahalo'- I act in the best interest of myself. Why? Because Mahalo has proven they do not have our best interest at heart, and they have not treated us with the proper respect."

"Mahalo has a lot of outrageous practices, if you ask me."

After receiving these emails from other Mahalo members, it made me feel a lot better that I made my complaint public. I only wished there was a way to notify ALL Mahalo members instead of just the few that I was able to reach. Also, after searching online, I found out that I am not the first to be banned from Mahalo for speaking my mind.  Read Rebelling Against the Vertical Manager on Jason Calacanis' Mahalo Collective Farm.