For those that are new to the DataCamp controversy: I have been following it from the beginning, and I'm here to share a bit so you know why this is big news and why the #rstats community is so fired up:

Firstly, read this article: It is stellar reporting that includes a summary of the major happenings where executives at DataCamp knew about an incident where an employee was sexually harassed by the CEO, and then they decided to brush it under the rug. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/daveyalba/datacamp-sexual-harassment-metoo-tech-startup

Every step that DataCamp has taken since then has been absolutely idiotic and insane. Some are documented in the article, and some haven't been. DataCamp released insincere apologies, and then doubled down on threatening and harassing people that disagreed with their actions.

They threatened people to keep quiet. They threatened to out the identity of the employee, who had to disclose that information publicly herself to try to prevent additional harassment.

If you look in the dictionary for PR nightmare, there should be a picture of DataCamp's CEO, Jonathan Cornelissen. If you had to write a playbook for the absolute worst way to handle a situation like this, DataCamp is the model.

Most or all of DataCamp's #rstats content creators/teachers abandoned their contracts over a year ago. DataCamp still uses their content without their approval because they legally can, and it gives new DataCamp users the false impression that the community still supports them.

Many of their employees left! Some quit in the middle of their mishandling this situation, but for some, it took many months to secure employment elsewhere. All the while, the board inexplicably refused to fire the CEO and their HR team was revealed as a complete joke.

Not included in the article is where Cornelissen ( @CornelissenJo) scoured Twitter to find people that tweeted or liked tweets critical of him/DataCamp and blocked them (Several/most of my #rstats folks are blocked too). He also looked us up on LinkedIn. Many of us repeatedly.

(Although viewing someone's Linkedin profile over and over again every few weeks isn't necessarily harassment, It's like he was playing a mind game that "I'm watching you!")

His girlfriend has randomly chimed into into Twitter conversations about DataCamp in the past several months to stick up for him and the company. How much of that stems from her cognitive dissonance vs. his direction is unknown.

Just when you thought that the DataCamp scandal was old news, (A lot of newcomers have no idea that this happened, and I suppose their business is finally doing well again?), they decide to stoke the coals and sue @rstudio!

First of all, RStudio makes professional software relating to R, like the IDE and other products like server software. It is NOT a DataCamp competitor as DataCamp says in sentence one of their announcement.

DataCamp teaches people how to code with data. RStudio provides tools. They are in totally separate areas. I saw someone likening it to a driver's ed teacher suing an auto manufacturer and saying "our competitor is slandering us."

Additionally, RStudio employees are people, and as such, they have the right to have opinions about a company that did such a horrific job over the past couple of years. If they privately recommend folks to not use DataCamp, that is not the same as a company slandering another.

I have seen no evidence that RStudio has made any claims about DataCamp at all, backed by evidence or not, inflammatory or not. Their reaction was to distance themselves. They may have also hired some ex-DataCamp folks, because they hire some of the best in the R community.

Anyway, please consider using many of the free resources available to learn R instead of DataCamp: https://twitter.com/Hao_and_Y/status/1278512404083675136

I also highly recommend @dataquestio !