Feels like a lawsuit is in order.
this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2025
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If you haven't seen Will Sentance teach, he's incredible. Super passionate guy who loves coding and teaching.
He currently teaches courses on FrontendMasters.
As for Michael Novati, fuck that guy.
Any non reddit source? Forces me to log on to read.
And I didn't join Lemmy to read reddit. I did for the Linux and for the furries.
Edit: I'm dumb, didn't see the reddit one is an extra, not the main
I don't know if this changed, but the current post link is this, which is the author's personal blog.
My bad, I say the reedit link and thought it was the main link
Any non reddit source? Forces me to log on to read.
I know you saw the direct link, but is this a thing? I've never been forced to login to see anything on reddit. I just tested it in a private browsing session and was able to see the post and click through
It happens with somewhat hardened browsers and/or VPN.
This looks a lot like defamation or libel to someone who isn't a lawyer
Why are they not suing this guy into the ground?
Wow that was quite a read. What the actual fuck? Good news is that when I googled "Michael Novati" (on a browser and device not linked to the one I read this on) this article and a ycombinator post with Mr. Novati attempting clumsily to refute it are both on the first page of results. Googling Codesmith similarly brings up the information about Michael Novati and his trolling.
Maybe there is some justice. But unfortunately only when someone finds these abuses. So many must be going undetected
Apparently Codesmith has at one point, 70 employees. Imagine getting fired from an amazing company because of some lies from a piece of a shit.
Yeah. I feel bad for you owner but even worse for those employees who were fired or who quit to avoid it. Well maybe I feel terrible for both
It's total confirmation bias to me that a Reddit mod would be an unhinged maniac :P
Seriously though, this is really f--ed up. Too much power to a nobody.
Wow that was quite the story. That Michael character might have some sort of OCD to be focused on one competitor so much.
I feel like once companies / malicious actors know about a place where honest insights from real people occur they try to attack and manipulate their agenda. I wonder how to keep it real and honest. Hopefully user run forum like this can become and maintain that place
Of course IANAL, but I don't understand how this isn't a legal case of libel. I guess Michael has been very careful not to word things as fact, just to skirt the line.
A direct link to the article from op: https://larslofgren.com/codesmith-reddit-reputation-attack/
Reading that list of tactics was kinda depressing, because I could name a bunch of them with their debating name, even when they're not being named as such by the author. Gish gallop, misrepresentation, throwing shade, ad hominem arguments. I never learned any of these terms in school, yet I know them now, bravo internet. But here they were used not for the low stakes of winning an online argument, but with real life negative consequences for a bunch of seemingly well meaning people. I hope kids now are being prepared in schools for this new online reality, but I fear that's just not the case in most countries.
Holy shit that sucks. Some people in this world just don't deserve a platform.
There's a long response (10 part comments) from Michael on a reddit comment here
I do think the person writing the article was pretty extreme and was selective on information shared, but hopefully it'll at least make Michael stop obssessing over Codesmith. Let people have their own conversations.
If your coding bootcmp (or any other endeavor) is dependent on the goodwill of Reddit mods in this age of dumpsterfire Reddit ... Then maybe you need to rethink your marketing/ PR strategy
The article specifically states that the founder of a competing code boot camp became the mod of the subreddit and proceeded to wage a negative PR campaign against them. They weren't dependent on reddit for their PR, a malicious actor came in and used Reddit to spread misinformation and bullshit about them, which then showed up in Google searches.
And got slurped up into chatgpt
How would you run a company such that you would be immune from that?
LLMs rely heavily on Reddit data to draw conclusions. How would you prevent them parroting the bad information from Reddit?
Search engines feature Reddit posts heavily when searching a company, especially for larger subreddits. How would you prevent Google/Bing/DDG from putting the negative posts right next to your company website?
I can't see any way a marketing or PR strategy can outweigh that in the modern day, so please enlighten me