4 ms·

By definition, Hacker News is a professional shill. It's an arm of YC and has special interests as a community.

sametmax 10y ago
All communites have, but people from YC usually don't seem to hide their intention in communication (or they are good at it and I didn't notice). The problem is when people are doing PR for an entity, while pretending they are sharing news, insights or data.
- alva 10y ago
  I agree that "shilling" really comes down to intent and transparency. Are you presenting the information and disclosing (this can be implicit if connection is obvious) your interests? I don't think most have a problem with that, however the particular forum or board might not be suitable for it.
  - sametmax 10y ago
    Indeed. The line is not clear though. Some people present a new services with show HN and are acclaimed, others are rejected as advertisers. HN like underdogs, innovators and good-doers, but is less laxed with big companies, status quo and money lovers. So if the later can disguise as the formers, they can game the system.
- fullshark 10y ago
  Everyone here pretty much has a professional stake in the topics discussed, and most people don't disclose that stake. People may be honest about their thinking but their analysis is certainly biased.
logicallee 10y ago
it just so happens that those interests are around supporting founders so they can build huge companies and disrupt major industries. (No joke.) Question: do threads that are critical of YC companies get buried just because they're YC companies? (For example if Uber had YC investment, which a cursory glance says it doesn't, would the criticism of it have been buried by mods here)? (I say this because there were a lot of critical stories about Uber recently, and in the past, too.)
- dang 10y ago
  The answer to your question is "of course not". When stories are critical of YC or YC-funded companies, we moderate them less than we otherwise would. I've posted about this many times: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20moderate%20yc%20less https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=... https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20pg%20chair https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&date.... This isn't because YC doesn't care about HN's business value. It's because YC knows what HN's value consists of: the community's curiosity and trust. That's the global optimum, so that's what's in YC's interests. It would be foolish to optimize for anything else.
  - logicallee 10y ago
    Thanks, dang. Though you've posted about it a lot I hadn't run across those comments yet - thanks for the links.
dang 10y ago
Isn't part of the definition of shilling that it's undisclosed? In that case, no: HN's business concessions to YC (job ads, and more recently Launch HNs) are public. Beyond those, we don't moderate HN specifically to promote YC's interests, and in fact err on the side of not doing so. You should see how sharply I scold YC startups who haven't yet had this drilled sufficiently into them. The best way to make HN valuable for YC is to optimize its value for the community, which is gratifying intellectual curiosity—so that's what we spend our time thinking about. I wrote more about this here if anyone's interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13861971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13861971.
- gist 10y ago
  > Isn't it part of that definition that the shillage is undisclosed? I will point out before as I did the other day that both you and PG (very ironically) didn't/don't identify who you are with respect to HN. I haven't checked the other partners I have noticed that some do identify as YC partners. Would also expect that any YC funded company might identify themselves as such so their comments or postings could be taken in context. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dang https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dang I personally think it's fine the way it operates but in all fairness the disclosure could be more than it is.
  - dang 10y ago
    That's a different concern. HN's culture has always been informal and implicit. That has upsides and downsides, but it's the way HN is and I'm loth to mess with it. People invoke 'disclosure', 'transparency', etc. as if these were unmitigated benefits, but when you delve into a complex system like HN they turn out to be tradeoffs. On HN the culture is not to spell everything out. That doesn't have to do with hiding anything; the information is all out there. It has to do with respecting users' intelligence, liking minimalism, liking users to have to work just a little, and so on. The downside of this approach is not that it obscures business interests—just think how excited the community would be to hit on something like that were we ever so dumb as to hide it!—but that it makes things harder for newcomers.

All communites have, but people from YC usually don't seem to hide their intention in communication (or they are good at it and I didn't notice). The problem is when people are doing PR for an entity, while pretending they are sharing news, insights or data.

alva 10y ago
I agree that "shilling" really comes down to intent and transparency. Are you presenting the information and disclosing (this can be implicit if connection is obvious) your interests? I don't think most have a problem with that, however the particular forum or board might not be suitable for it.
- sametmax 10y ago
  Indeed. The line is not clear though. Some people present a new services with show HN and are acclaimed, others are rejected as advertisers. HN like underdogs, innovators and good-doers, but is less laxed with big companies, status quo and money lovers. So if the later can disguise as the formers, they can game the system.
fullshark 10y ago
Everyone here pretty much has a professional stake in the topics discussed, and most people don't disclose that stake. People may be honest about their thinking but their analysis is certainly biased.

logicallee 10y ago

it just so happens that those interests are around supporting founders so they can build huge companies and disrupt major industries. (No joke.) Question: do threads that are critical of YC companies get buried just because they're YC companies? (For example if Uber had YC investment, which a cursory glance says it doesn't, would the criticism of it have been buried by mods here)? (I say this because there were a lot of critical stories about Uber recently, and in the past, too.)

dang 10y ago
The answer to your question is "of course not". When stories are critical of YC or YC-funded companies, we moderate them less than we otherwise would. I've posted about this many times: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20moderate%20yc%20less https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=... https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20pg%20chair https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&date.... This isn't because YC doesn't care about HN's business value. It's because YC knows what HN's value consists of: the community's curiosity and trust. That's the global optimum, so that's what's in YC's interests. It would be foolish to optimize for anything else.
- logicallee 10y ago
  Thanks, dang. Though you've posted about it a lot I hadn't run across those comments yet - thanks for the links.

dang 10y ago

Isn't part of the definition of shilling that it's undisclosed? In that case, no: HN's business concessions to YC (job ads, and more recently Launch HNs) are public. Beyond those, we don't moderate HN specifically to promote YC's interests, and in fact err on the side of not doing so. You should see how sharply I scold YC startups who haven't yet had this drilled sufficiently into them. The best way to make HN valuable for YC is to optimize its value for the community, which is gratifying intellectual curiosity—so that's what we spend our time thinking about. I wrote more about this here if anyone's interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13861971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13861971.

gist 10y ago
> Isn't it part of that definition that the shillage is undisclosed? I will point out before as I did the other day that both you and PG (very ironically) didn't/don't identify who you are with respect to HN. I haven't checked the other partners I have noticed that some do identify as YC partners. Would also expect that any YC funded company might identify themselves as such so their comments or postings could be taken in context. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dang https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dang I personally think it's fine the way it operates but in all fairness the disclosure could be more than it is.
- dang 10y ago
  That's a different concern. HN's culture has always been informal and implicit. That has upsides and downsides, but it's the way HN is and I'm loth to mess with it. People invoke 'disclosure', 'transparency', etc. as if these were unmitigated benefits, but when you delve into a complex system like HN they turn out to be tradeoffs. On HN the culture is not to spell everything out. That doesn't have to do with hiding anything; the information is all out there. It has to do with respecting users' intelligence, liking minimalism, liking users to have to work just a little, and so on. The downside of this approach is not that it obscures business interests—just think how excited the community would be to hit on something like that were we ever so dumb as to hide it!—but that it makes things harder for newcomers.