I'm sure this site works quite differently from what you say. There's no paid team of moderators flicking stories and comments off the site because management doesn't like them.

There's dang who I've seen edit headlines to match the site rules. Then there's the army of users upvoting and flagging stories, voting (up and down) and flagging comments. If you have some data to backup your sentiments, please do share it - we'd certainly like to evaluate it.

HN brought on a second mod (Tim, this year, iirc)

My email exchanges with Dang, as part of the moderation that happens around here, have all been positive

1. I've been moderated, got a slowdown timeout for a while

2. I've emailed about specific accounts, (some egregious stuff you've probably never seen)

3. Dang once emailed me to ask why I flagged a story that was near the top, but getting heavily flagged by many users. He sought understanding before making moderation choices

I will defend HN moderation people & policies 'til the cows come home. There is nothing close to what we have here on HN, which is largely about us being involved in the process and HN having a unique UX and size

dang announced they were moved from volunteer to paid position a few years ago. More rumblings about more mods brought on since then. What makes you say you're "so sure"?

> There's no paid team of moderators flicking stories and comments off the site because management doesn't like them.

Emphasis mine. The question is does the paid moderation team disappear unfavorable posts and comments, or are they merely downranked and marked dead (which can still be seen by turning on showdead in your profile).

As an anonymous coward on HN for at least a decade, I'd say that's not really true.

When paul graham was more active and respected here, I spoke negatively about how revered he was. I was upvoted.

I also think VC-backed companies are not good for society. And have expressed as much. To positive response here.

We shouldn't shit on one of the few bastions of the internet we have left.

I regret my negativity around pg - he was right about a lot and seems to be a good guy.

Yeah, I avoid telling people about HN. It’s too rare and pleasant of an anomaly to risk getting morphed into X/Bluesky/Reddit.