Udemy Needs to Review Courses and Vet Instructors

Published Monday, September 16, 2019 — 6 minute read

#women-in-tech

Content/Trigger Warning: violence against women

My Twitter mentions exploded today over tweets I made about misogynistic Udemy course that has (thankfully) been removed from the site. This post is about the course of events from the first tweet I saw, to the end of a day full of problematic replies and discoveries of even more courses that should be removed. I'll break the content up as much as possible.

The First Tweet

I saw the first tweet about this course from Twitter user @ryzokuken. The course is titled: "How to Hack a Girl: The Real Life Version." The link preview description says, "Make Her A Woman Be Attracted to You By Hacking Her Brain!" (ow, the grammar.)

I tweeted about it around midnight and included a screenshot of the course's basic information. Aside from the title and description mentioned above, it also showed:

A 2.9 / 5 star rating from 36 reviews
Quantity of 3,231 students enrolled since May 2019
The instructor's name: Pedro Planas
A 45% off price of \$10.99, and 5 hours remaining at that price

My tweet has been seen tens of thousands of times. Hundreds liked it. Obviously I'm not the only person who finds it problematic.

The Course & Its Issues

First of all, women are not hardware or software and therefore cannot be hacked. We are human beings. Second of all, you can't make women be attracted to you if they don't want to be. That's called entitlement and women are disproportionately harassed, assaulted, and even murdered because they reject men who think they're entitled to our bodies and attention. Before you try to debate this statement with me, here's JUST FIVE articles you should read:

The original thread from that last bullet point is no longer up, but you can take a look at these quote tweets from the first tweet in the thread.

Let's also take a look at the course description:

"Have you ever felt like she doesn't pay attention to you and she ends up being with the bad guy while you are left behind hopeless? If this is your case, you are just some clicks away to make her be attracted to you and so you end up being the one who ends up with her. This is a videocourse on how to hack a girl's brain by understanding how a woman thinks, how to improve your overall appealing and science-based pshycological tricks that will make you be awesome at getting her to like you!"

All emphasis, gross misspellings, and horrid grammar are by the author of the description.

Sigh. There's so much to unpack.

More Courses To Remove

This isn't the first time Udemy has had to remove courses. Twitter user @ohdaeni has highlighted this issue as well on Twitter. Luckily, Udemy removed them and others by the same instructors. But why do they keep letting this happen? Why don't they have a review and approval process for all courses attempting to be added?

Below are some courses I found today with just minutes of searching, also sorted into fun categories.

Ableism

"The secret of how I've seen Over 2500 Deaf and Mute Healed" (impossible, but OK)
"Hypnosis - Improve Your Hearing Using Self Hypnosis" (also impossible, but whatever)
Welcoming disabled colleagues and customers with confidence (disabled people are not things to "deal" with, but thanks)

Sexism

Just go read the descriptions. Have a bucket nearby you can vomit into.

What You Can Do

Udemy wants you to send them an email. I want you to flood their mentions. Pressure them into making change. Report awful courses. It's 2019, we have lots of people wanting to write software to filter this kind of crap, and there's no excuse for exposing paying customers to danger. Notice how Udemy never made a public tweet about this? They want to keep it quiet. Don't let them.