Trouble with Meetup calendars? Please read!
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It has come to my attention today that some (maybe most) Meetup ICS calendars are no longer working. I’ve done a bit of experimentation and what I believe I have discovered is as such:
- Meetup now throws you to a 404 error page if you try to access an iCal (ICS) URL that looks like this one, unless you are logged into Meetup in your browser:
https://www.meetup.com/example/events/ical/ - Meetup seems to be using some kind of non-standard authentication method (since there isn’t one for iCal besides BasicAuth) to restrict access. Systems that have previously accessed the feeds seem to still be able to, as long as nothing changes. (For example, changing PHP version, moving the site to a new IP address, etc.)
I’ve been trying to find any official word from Meetup about changes to their iCal policy, but so far haven’t turned anything up. If you know any more about this, or are experiencing trouble with Meetup and ICS Calendar yourself, please let me know below!
- Meetup now throws you to a 404 error page if you try to access an iCal (ICS) URL that looks like this one, unless you are logged into Meetup in your browser:
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Update: Upon further investigation, this appears to be a broader issue with access to any of Meetup’s calendar sharing tools (the RSS, Atom, iCal and Outlook subscribe links at the bottom of Meetup calendars). I’ve done some testing on my end and found that none of these are working properly in external apps. (In my specific case, that was trying the iCal feed in the Mac Calendar app, and trying the RSS feed in NetNewsWire.)
I’m able to access the feeds only within a web browser, while logged into Meetup. Trying to access them while logged out or through an external app is giving a 404 error. This also is happening when trying to access the feeds within ICS Calendar, which is essentially another external app.
My best guess here is that Meetup realized their system had some security/privacy issues — after all, iCal/ICS and RSS are both inherently wide open, public, read-only protocols — and rather than adding the ability for group admins to select whether their feeds were public or not (the only reasonable method of giving admins control of their data while still offering these subscribe options), they just slapped on a login requirement, without realizing that would completely break the tools altogether.
I suspect Meetup will reverse this or resolve the issue fairly quickly once they realize that these links no longer function properly. I would encourage any Meetup users here to contact Meetup support to express your concern over subscribe links not working. (It would be most effective if you note that they are not working, period, unless you’re logged in in a browser, rather than specifically mentioning ICS Calendar, which is not directly relevant to the problem.)
Update: This GitHub project sheds some light on the situation:
https://github.com/juniorguru/teemup#why
Unfortunately, contrary to my hopeful speculations in my last post in this thread, it appears this was a deliberate business decision by Meetup, to break previously functional open protocol access and lock down content in a walled garden with paid API access. With this in mind, it does not look like it will be possible in the future to use ICS Calendar with Meetup, since they have decided to simply break their own ICS feeds. I am investigating the possibility of using Teemup or something similar as a workaround, but I suspect (as does the developer of Teemup) that any workaround will only be temporary.
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