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Maybe it’s related to their decision to turn YCombinator into a “safe space” for very specific people; or the way YC takes steps to silence some voices while hi

Maybe it’s related to their decision to turn YCombinator into a “safe space” for very specific people; or the way YC takes steps to silence some voices while hiding the fact that they’re silenced. These are deliberate decisions that cause the site to work very differently than naive people envision it from working. I’m not crazy enough to sue over that shit; but somebody might be.

dang 5y ago
It's hard to tell what these dark insinuations refer to, but there's nothing (that I'm aware of) that hasn't been fully explained many times—nor are there any questions we don't answer. If you're talking about shadowbanning, for example, there's plenty of explanation at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686672 and the links back from there.
- amznthrwaway 5y ago
  I have multiple accounts that you (or somebody) hell-banned, with real genuine content, and the described process was not followed. Thank you for, once again, proving that you’re a low integrity individual.
  - dang 5y ago
    If you're going to make a claim like that, you should supply links so readers can make up their own minds. When people don't do that, it's usually because the real story is rather different than they're making out. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22make%20up%20their%20own%20minds%22%20link&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... I may be mistaken, but I believe that with your previous accounts that we were aware of, the "real genuine content" was pretty trollish. When users keep creating accounts like that, we stop telling them that we're banning them, because they know perfectly well what they're doing, as do we. This is all explained at the links I mentioned upthread. We do make mistakes, and when we find out about them, we apologize and try to correct things. But shadowbanning accounts that are innocently posting "real genuine content" isn't anything we normally do.
    - dec0dedab0de 5y ago
      I don't agree with the post you're replying to, but before you took over it was much more common to be shadow banned for a silly reason. For example my first account, which admittedly didn't have top quality content, hardly did anything worthy of a ban by today's standards. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=d3c0d3dab0d3 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=d3c0d3dab0d3
      - dang 5y ago
        For sure, the site worked differently prior to 2014. I'm talking about how we've operated since then. 7 years is an internet eternity! Though I suppose I should be thankful that people are still talking about things that happened in 2013 because it means they still care. HN was moderated differently in the early years because pg was running it in whatever hours he could eke out between running YC and having small children. That was a totally different situation than now. It's a miracle the site stayed up at all. It's not clear why that account was banned, unless it was related to other accounts that did bad things? (You don't have to answer that.) In any case, I've unbanned it now and restored the affected posts, in case that's helpful.
        dec0dedab0de 5y ago
        I always assumed it was because the name looked like spam nonsense, which is why I put the explanation in this one. I got over it pretty quickly, but thank you for the gesture.
        dang 5y ago
        I don't think HN ever used to ban accounts for that reason. It must have been something else. We might be able to figure out what from the logs, but that's time-consuming and probably not worth it.
    - amznthrwaway 5y ago
      You are, in fact, mistaken. If you go back far enough, you hit a high quality account banned for a stupid reason, without notice, warning, or discussion. After that one you’ll find accounts that shitpost, but before that... good stuff! But there’s no value in arguing over this. I long ago decided it was more fun to burn the bridge (by rudely stating things that are true) on this set of browser/cookies/account/IPs. I’m not going to dox myself to prove that your second paragraph was wrong. Especially when I concede that _after_ I got banned stupidly and unfairly, I decided to fight back by becoming ban-worthy. The “optimist” in me thinks your a decent person who happens to have some big blind spots and biases, and you might eventually figure out how to address them if you meet the right set of people and start to learn from folks who don’t look like you. Maybe you’d realize that there are a collection of things that HN encourages, all of which contribute to a “safe space” for certain people, while excluding others. I hope my optimistic view is eventually right. Edit: thank you to the peer post to this comment that gives an example of this happening to them a long time ago. I didn’t want to dox myself to show it’s a real thing. I’m adding this as an ‘edit’ instead of a reply to the peer post because this account is just barely allowed to post at all.

dang 5y ago

It's hard to tell what these dark insinuations refer to, but there's nothing (that I'm aware of) that hasn't been fully explained many times—nor are there any questions we don't answer. If you're talking about shadowbanning, for example, there's plenty of explanation at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686672 and the links back from there.

amznthrwaway 5y ago
I have multiple accounts that you (or somebody) hell-banned, with real genuine content, and the described process was not followed. Thank you for, once again, proving that you’re a low integrity individual.
- dang 5y ago
  If you're going to make a claim like that, you should supply links so readers can make up their own minds. When people don't do that, it's usually because the real story is rather different than they're making out. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22make%20up%20their%20own%20minds%22%20link&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... I may be mistaken, but I believe that with your previous accounts that we were aware of, the "real genuine content" was pretty trollish. When users keep creating accounts like that, we stop telling them that we're banning them, because they know perfectly well what they're doing, as do we. This is all explained at the links I mentioned upthread. We do make mistakes, and when we find out about them, we apologize and try to correct things. But shadowbanning accounts that are innocently posting "real genuine content" isn't anything we normally do.
  - dec0dedab0de 5y ago
    I don't agree with the post you're replying to, but before you took over it was much more common to be shadow banned for a silly reason. For example my first account, which admittedly didn't have top quality content, hardly did anything worthy of a ban by today's standards. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=d3c0d3dab0d3 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=d3c0d3dab0d3
    - dang 5y ago
      For sure, the site worked differently prior to 2014. I'm talking about how we've operated since then. 7 years is an internet eternity! Though I suppose I should be thankful that people are still talking about things that happened in 2013 because it means they still care. HN was moderated differently in the early years because pg was running it in whatever hours he could eke out between running YC and having small children. That was a totally different situation than now. It's a miracle the site stayed up at all. It's not clear why that account was banned, unless it was related to other accounts that did bad things? (You don't have to answer that.) In any case, I've unbanned it now and restored the affected posts, in case that's helpful.
      - dec0dedab0de 5y ago
        I always assumed it was because the name looked like spam nonsense, which is why I put the explanation in this one. I got over it pretty quickly, but thank you for the gesture.
        dang 5y ago
        I don't think HN ever used to ban accounts for that reason. It must have been something else. We might be able to figure out what from the logs, but that's time-consuming and probably not worth it.
  - amznthrwaway 5y ago
    You are, in fact, mistaken. If you go back far enough, you hit a high quality account banned for a stupid reason, without notice, warning, or discussion. After that one you’ll find accounts that shitpost, but before that... good stuff! But there’s no value in arguing over this. I long ago decided it was more fun to burn the bridge (by rudely stating things that are true) on this set of browser/cookies/account/IPs. I’m not going to dox myself to prove that your second paragraph was wrong. Especially when I concede that _after_ I got banned stupidly and unfairly, I decided to fight back by becoming ban-worthy. The “optimist” in me thinks your a decent person who happens to have some big blind spots and biases, and you might eventually figure out how to address them if you meet the right set of people and start to learn from folks who don’t look like you. Maybe you’d realize that there are a collection of things that HN encourages, all of which contribute to a “safe space” for certain people, while excluding others. I hope my optimistic view is eventually right. Edit: thank you to the peer post to this comment that gives an example of this happening to them a long time ago. I didn’t want to dox myself to show it’s a real thing. I’m adding this as an ‘edit’ instead of a reply to the peer post because this account is just barely allowed to post at all.