I honestly could not care less what your definition is, these have passed through the regular submission queue in the past and it turned into a shitshow and since then they've been given protected status. Clearly that doesn't stop people from wanting to revert that change, which is probably proof that that was an excellent decision.
Special posts given special statuses are by definition not normal HN submissions, so representing them as nearly identical to normal HN submissions is misleading.
They get posted to the top of the page and automatically decay, they are clearly marked in the title. To begrudge YC this one pay-off for their efforts and funding of HN seems a little entitled to me. No vote arrows, points and comments is distinction enough for me. I don't think I ever clicked on one by mistake, they are pretty obvious.
If you think you can build a better HN then maybe you should?
The top comment in this thread is the claim that it is a dark pattern, and many of the children comments are supporting that, so maybe consider that your perspective is not the majority one, or it's at least not as clear as you suggest.
I'm sure there are a whole bunch of us that _don't_ find it to be an issue and don't feel the need to prolong its discussion. This type of topic draws in the type of individual that finds it to be an issue: those that don't, move on.
A lack of public support for an idea is not evidence for support for the idea, so I'm not sure why you would even bring up the hypothetical "whole bunch of us" that secretly feel the other way.
If I didn’t reply to you here, what would you assume from that? That I didn’t have a response? That I didn’t see your response? That I agreed with you? That I disagreed but didn’t think it was worth the effort to continue the discussion because there really no way to change your mind given you dismissed me out of hand?
For what it’s worth, I debated initially commenting at all because I thought it was unlikely to be productive. I’m sure I’m not the only person who considered this (sheer numbers in this case make that unlikely) and they made the choice not to.
I understand your point, but it's not evidence for the opposing belief. And it cuts both ways, not just one way...people who think that it's a dark pattern but also don't care to engage.
Upvotes are a signal of support for an idea in the community. Whether strong or weak is debatable, but implying that they mean the opposite because of all the people who didn't care to vote is silly.
Thanks, I read it. I don't mind the no-commenting rule tbh, if the submission was tagged as "YC Hiring Announcement" To me, the submissions currently feel like they're trying to present themselves as organic content. I understand you think differently. It would cost YC nothing to explicitly tag them though and put the whole "dark pattern" criticism to rest.
A 'dark pattern' presumes intent to deceive. Here it is pretty much the opposite:
Hackernews started out as a way for YC to talk to their would-be founders (it was called 'start-up news' originally) and the rest of the postings are the noise and those are the signal. If you are unaware of the relationship between YC and HN you could be forgiven but after more than a decade here I don't think that excuse holds.
Marking job ads more explicitly won't change anything, it is just a way to pressure YC into making some change to satisfy nit pickers and there is far more important stuff to do, and is as far as I'm concerned off-topic given that the question was 'why can't we comment on these postings' and that question has been answered afaic.
Furthermore: the who is hiring threads are there as well for everybody else as well, which given the audience and the fact that these compete directly with YC funded companies should be proof positive that no malicious intent was ever present. If it were then those threads would have never happened.
I understand they can do whatever they want, and I also know the relationship between YC and HN. They could make job posts blend in even more, artificially boost YC-positive content, and weigh down YC-negative content, and they would be totally within their rights, and if we don't like it we can leave.
I think I understand why you are defending HN. You see how a small community grew to what it is now, and all of the unpaid work that went into that. I don't think that is in conflict with the idea of being super transparent (to the point where it's obvious to everyone) about things like sponsored posts. It's clearly not obvious to everyone.
You make a good point about the hiring threads. I agree those are evidence that YC is making an effort to support non YC startups.
