Not to mention it allows them to control negative comments/articles through implicit threats/incentives and direct (and hidden) moderation/manipulation.
There's an annoying fakeness about YC/HN that gets old after a while. Lots of founders willing to tell YC folks whatever they want to hear and YC folks happily slurping it up like it's authentic. Genuinely gamed. And worse they treat anyone who isn't a sycophant (people like @pinboard/idlewords) as crazy assholes who they actively seek to filter out of YC/HN as possible.
It would be really good for the world if HN was replaced by a neutral platform.
Although we banned this account for abuse elsewhere in the thread, I'm unkilling this comment because it's so patently untrue. It doesn't resemble the Hacker News I look at, and I look at HN a lot.
It's also factually incorrect, both re idlewords (whose latest piece spent most of the day at #1 on HN) and everyone else who uses this site in the intended spirit.
If you won't take Dan's word for it, maybe you'll take mine?
I spend a lot (too much) time here, I've been quite critical of PG, a fair number of YC investments that I think behaved in an un-ethical way, and have read most of what Maciej has written through HN (and the associated comment threads).
When PG was still at the helm I would not have come out in support of the balance in the moderation and some of what you wrote would have stuck but those times are gone (at one point he called me a 'concern troll' for raising a legitimate issue which I haven't forgotten about).
But Dan and Scott have been as clean as could be in running the site, the only link there is is that YC still pays their salaries but afaik they have a completely free reign to moderate as they see fit and if you're going to make claims like the ones above then you probably should back those up with specific cases where you feel the moderation wasn't even handed. I know of no such cases off hand.
There's an annoying fakeness about YC/HN that gets old after a while. Lots of founders willing to tell YC folks whatever they want to hear and YC folks happily slurping it up like it's authentic. Genuinely gamed. And worse they treat anyone who isn't a sycophant (people like @pinboard/idlewords) as crazy assholes who they actively seek to filter out of YC/HN as possible.
It would be really good for the world if HN was replaced by a neutral platform.