I for one am glad that Rational Recovery did away with meetings. Given the nature of the recovery ecosystem, where everyone else is saying that nobody can quit on their own, somebody had to do it.
Granted, Trimpey was unable to completely shut it down the meetings, since the RR Self-Help Network mutated into SMART recovery. He views this as a bad thing, but I don't. I think it was the natural, logical outcome.
As long as the option of completely independent and completely private recovery is available as a counterpoint, it really doesn't matter what other people or programs do. The problem, as with any system, exists when there are no options, and because of this, AVRT is crucial, IMO.