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I’m confused. So YC kicked out the guy who complained about it on Twitter and not the people who advocated for lying to skip lines? Wtf?

whymauri 5y ago
I'm guessing it goes like this: 1. Skipping vaccine line and talking about it is not actually against BookFace/YC ToS, or it would be a stretch to apply ToS. 2. Publicly talking about matters inside the private group is against ToS since it breaches privacy. In a way that paints the group negatively, nonetheless. Pretty straightforward. It doesn't really matter *to YC* whether anyone skipped a line or not, what matters are private forum matters getting blasted to hundreds (thousands?) of Twitter users. Edit: before you get angry, I'm presenting this from the most plausible perspective of YC, not my own feelings on the matter (which are irrelevant). Edit2: what are people seeing that I'm not seeing here? Clearly I'm missing something, because wow I've never gotten piled on like this on HN.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > 2. Publicly talking about matters inside the private group is against ToS So never mind their high-falutin' ideas of Founders being A Better Class Of People; in the end it's just frickin' Fight Club after all.
- ctvo 5y ago
  And it’s why YC doesn’t have the reputation it once did. Letting Sam bro up the institution wasn’t the best decision in hindsight as this incident demonstrates.
  - geofft 5y ago
    pg believes the Civil War wasn't actually about slavery (http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html), so I'm not sure that Sam actually made the place worse.
    - SyzygistSix 5y ago
      That's a really disingenuous take from a single line in an essay that is not about the subject. If we could say "The Civil War was about slavery" and be done with the subject, I'm pretty sure so many books, studies, and histories about the subject would not have been made.
      - geofft 5y ago
        I mean, we can say that and be done with the subject. For instance, just look at the seceding states' articles of secession: they quite plainly spell out that they are seceding because of slavery and to join the other slaveholding states. But there are a whole lot of Americans who wish to believe that the South had a noble cause (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy), and they are more than happy to buy books and watch TV shows explaining what that cause is, so such books and TV shows get written. The Civil War was just a couple of generations ago, and involved a huge chunk of the country. The various organizations attempting to rehabilitate their legacy (e.g., the Daughters of the Confederacy) are younger still, and active today. It's not actually surprising that there are a large number of Americans who for whatever reason wish to believe that there was a better reason for the Confederacy to do what it did than slavery - the Daughters, for instance, are quite literally descended from Confederate soldiers, so there is a natural desire to believe that they fought for a worthy cause. But the number of people who believe it is hardly evidence that it's true. What is noteworthy that Paul Graham (who wasn't even born in the US!) is one of those people, and moreover doesn't simply believe (as you're claiming) that there's a legitimate debate about what the Civil War was about - he believes that the possibility that the Civil War was about slavery is a "cartoon version" which can't possibly be true. And yes, it's a throwaway line in an unrelated talk. But he still said it as if he believed it, and the alternative interpretation - that he doesn't really believe it and said it anyway because he thought it would please his audience - is that he is a man of poor judgment and a loud mouth in things he should judge less and speak less on, which goes to my point that Sam did not "bro up" YC, it was already rotten.
        SyzygistSix 5y ago
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  Your post is a bit inaccurate. Biggar tweeted about his unhappiness about the behavior of a person in the private group. He received a public response fromt he person in question with a dismissive meme. He in turn responded to that. So, one could argue that the line-jumping-advocate relinquished his privacy in the first place.
  - whymauri 5y ago
    I'm under the impression that any public commentary about what goes on inside that forum is generally discouraged, but that's just what I've seen. Although this is an interesting point, for sure.
    - sampo 5y ago
      > I'm under the impression that any public commentary about what goes on inside that forum is generally discouraged When private organizations in their internal culture and functioning deviate too far away from common social norms, you kinda hope that a whistleblower or the press calls them out for it.
    - anigbrowl 5y ago
      That wouldn't surprise me. Don't worry about the downvotes, it's not unusual for votes on a post to oscillate wildly in any sort of hot topic because people often revert to tribalism as they first scan the thread.
    - throwthrowbye 5y ago
      You are correct. YC emphasizes regularly that the forums are private and otherwise the people wouldn’t share as much or give blunter truth. Having seen screenshots of the post in question, it was bad, but it also would have been strange to kick someone out for that. The poster is an asshole and proud of it, but the community seems to have responded directly.
- amznthrwaway 5y ago
  Read the Paul Graham essay on “What You Can’t Say” and realize that YC culture has things you can’t say. YC culture allows you to say ‘here is how to marginally undermine a public health effort for your own benefit”, but YC culture does not allow you to publicly say “people at YC teach each other how to undermine a public health effort for their own benefit”. Anything that is critical of YC or Paul is heresy. Anything that prioritizes society over a YC participant is heresy. These things can’t be done publicly, or you’ll be cast out of YC. http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
cryptoz 5y ago
I'm also confused. But it seems like the tweet in question is a false story that could be libel/defamation or something? He later issues a 'correction' (why not delete the original wrong tweet?) that says that the story about "advocating for lying to skip lines" is false. [1] I don't have any part of this and I'm confused and don't know what's going on here. But it does not seem like the tweet everyone is focusing on was even true. So the story becomes possibly, that YC kicked someone out for spreading lies about people in their internal community? I don't know. [1] "I was incorrect in saying the 2nd founder lied, and would like to apologize." https://twitter.com/paulbiggar/status/1370144350861135881 https://twitter.com/paulbiggar/status/1370144350861135881
- ivanbakel 5y ago
  >But it does not seem like the tweet everyone is focusing on was even true. So the story becomes possibly, that YC kicked someone out for spreading lies about people in their internal community? I don't know. It's still partially true - the allegation of lying was wrong, but the allegation of instructing others how to lie is still being made. This is clarified by the tweet that you linked.
  - chris11 5y ago
    I didn't quite read it that way. The accusation is that both told other people how to skip the line. My assumption is that the both founders told other people how they could get the vaccine. A more charitable observation would be that the second founder told people how they could get it without waiting in line or lying. The accusation still sounds gross. Though vaccine rollout wasn't great in the bay area. I got an email from my doctor about appointments being available. The ones in the bay area were taken really quickly. Availability was much better in other counties. There were also a couple other replies. One mentioned you could get vaccinated for volunteering for 4 hours. Another mentioned some sites were doing first come first serve.
    - ivanbakel 5y ago
      >The accusation is that both told other people how to skip the line. My assumption is that the both founders told other people how they could get the vaccine. A more charitable observation would be that the second founder told people how they could get it without waiting in line or lying. You're being charitable in the wrong direction, because you're not interpreting the allegations in good faith. What would be the point of taking to Twitter if all the second founder did was instruct people how to get a vaccine, without the component of lying to bypass the queue? Since there would be no point to such an outrage, it's uncharitable to pre-emptively dismiss the contents of the allegations. Whether or not they are eventually shown to be true, they should still be interpreted in the most serious and direct way.
kubb 5y ago
Why is that confusing? If you condemn the in-group publicly, it's a sign of betrayal, and they kick you out. Monkeys strong together, that's all there is to it.
- eat_veggies 5y ago
  It's cool and reassuring that YC has no principles or morals other than "monkeys strong together"
  - kubb 5y ago
    There are no rules about these kinds of things in private organizations, so it defaults to the instinctive human behavior. Whenever you hear about the "greats" of the industry, you can be aware that they rose to prominence through navigating power structures built on such principles.
  - asadlionpk 5y ago
    It’s not a bad moral though.
    - dwaltrip 5y ago
      We can do much better.
  - ignoramous 5y ago
    (as an outsider looking in) I think, for YC, who pride themselves on their tight-knit alumni network and reach of their partners, in-group bias was always going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Macha 5y ago
Is it really that out of character for a tech VC company to have no objections to "disrupting" government processes?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
tshaddox 5y ago
That's exactly what I would expect. Can you explain why you would expect something else to happen?
minimaxir 5y ago
Per the tweet replies, Paul Biggar's company that YC funded has been defunct, so that likely makes YC's calculus to remove him easier (optics aside).
- YuriNiyazov 5y ago
  This is the part that I don't understand. CircleCI is alive and well last time I checked.
  - minimaxir 5y ago
    Apparently it was a startup wayyyyy back in 2010, before CircleCI: https://techcrunch.com/2010/04/12/ycs-newstilt-aims-to-help-journalists-create-a-business-model-for-content/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/04/12/ycs-newstilt-aims-to-help-...
- dang 5y ago
  FWIW I don't think that would much affect the decision. In past similar cases, where the startup wasn't defunct, YC has divested. I've never been part of any such decision, but I do know YC and the people who have to make such decisions, and from what I've seen they'd be reasoning from first principles or at least trying to.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
Tenoke 5y ago
I'm guessing he broke an internal rule about talking of what's said in the founders forum, while the founder is breaking unrelated outside rules and being a dick, which isn't as fireable.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Why is it not though? Intentionally misleading people is how you get Theranos. Being a dick is how you get a TK@Uber as a leader. Neither of those are examples one should follow of "how to be a leader"
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    Why would YC care about that? Their ethos is “how to make a boatloat of money”. Theranos would be fine if they weren’t caught out before their IPO.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      That's a very sad commentary on the human condition if you think anything about Theranos would have been "fine". If anyone involved knew what was going on and still pushed for the IPO to get their money, then they need to be hit for fraud. As a collective, we've lost our humanity. I used to think we were losing it, but over the past few years I feel like we've moved past losing and now just lost it completely.
      - hallway_monitor 5y ago
        Humanity as in valuing service to mankind over the abstract point value of accumulating money?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jijji 5y ago
What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
fruityrudy 5y ago
What’s so bad about skipping the line? Priority groups don’t even make sense. It’s some egalitarian crap for the sake of it and more so for buying votes from older ppl. Then we are left with: it’s simply against the rules. And as if people in SF care about that. Why r so many people in SF on these moral crusades anyway. Getting high off enforcing rules and looking down on others. Everyone should be equal…as long as I get my ridiculous salary and elite network. It’s like imposter syndrome for the privileged…so they need to pretend they are for the common man. Good riddance to such crusaders. PG is a boss.
ekianjo 5y ago
Lying to skip lines is probably considered "growth hacking"
- koolba 5y ago
  It’d likely count as a non-computer system you hacked.
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  But he didn't lie. Many clinics are opening up to first-come, first-served because vax rates are dropping and they still have inventory. Feels like drama?
  - pdonis 5y ago
    Were they doing that in March, when the incident in question happened?
    - SyzygistSix 5y ago
      Sites that were not getting enough people coming in to use all the doses they had available were doing that in my area. It was not all sites all the time but at a certain point, lots of places switched priority to getting doses to people regardless of demographic so that they didn't spoil. And lots of that info was word of mouth or social media posts, because there was little way to centrally coordinate it.
mdoms 5y ago
Sounds like Biggar was being a massive drama queen and no one wanted to have that kind of toxicity around.
aristophenes 5y ago
The guy who advocated getting the vaccine has chimed in with his side of the story elsewhere in these comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400221 It makes sense because in some states its been basically any adult can walk in and get a shot for months already. I'm surprised there is anywhere in the country left where that is not the case.
- jahlove 5y ago
  This was not the case back in March.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

whymauri 5y ago

I'm guessing it goes like this: 1. Skipping vaccine line and talking about it is not actually against BookFace/YC ToS, or it would be a stretch to apply ToS. 2. Publicly talking about matters inside the private group is against ToS since it breaches privacy. In a way that paints the group negatively, nonetheless. Pretty straightforward. It doesn't really matter *to YC* whether anyone skipped a line or not, what matters are private forum matters getting blasted to hundreds (thousands?) of Twitter users. Edit: before you get angry, I'm presenting this from the most plausible perspective of YC, not my own feelings on the matter (which are irrelevant). Edit2: what are people seeing that I'm not seeing here? Clearly I'm missing something, because wow I've never gotten piled on like this on HN.

CRConrad 5y ago
> 2. Publicly talking about matters inside the private group is against ToS So never mind their high-falutin' ideas of Founders being A Better Class Of People; in the end it's just frickin' Fight Club after all.
ctvo 5y ago
And it’s why YC doesn’t have the reputation it once did. Letting Sam bro up the institution wasn’t the best decision in hindsight as this incident demonstrates.
- geofft 5y ago
  pg believes the Civil War wasn't actually about slavery (http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html), so I'm not sure that Sam actually made the place worse.
  - SyzygistSix 5y ago
    That's a really disingenuous take from a single line in an essay that is not about the subject. If we could say "The Civil War was about slavery" and be done with the subject, I'm pretty sure so many books, studies, and histories about the subject would not have been made.
    - geofft 5y ago
      I mean, we can say that and be done with the subject. For instance, just look at the seceding states' articles of secession: they quite plainly spell out that they are seceding because of slavery and to join the other slaveholding states. But there are a whole lot of Americans who wish to believe that the South had a noble cause (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy), and they are more than happy to buy books and watch TV shows explaining what that cause is, so such books and TV shows get written. The Civil War was just a couple of generations ago, and involved a huge chunk of the country. The various organizations attempting to rehabilitate their legacy (e.g., the Daughters of the Confederacy) are younger still, and active today. It's not actually surprising that there are a large number of Americans who for whatever reason wish to believe that there was a better reason for the Confederacy to do what it did than slavery - the Daughters, for instance, are quite literally descended from Confederate soldiers, so there is a natural desire to believe that they fought for a worthy cause. But the number of people who believe it is hardly evidence that it's true. What is noteworthy that Paul Graham (who wasn't even born in the US!) is one of those people, and moreover doesn't simply believe (as you're claiming) that there's a legitimate debate about what the Civil War was about - he believes that the possibility that the Civil War was about slavery is a "cartoon version" which can't possibly be true. And yes, it's a throwaway line in an unrelated talk. But he still said it as if he believed it, and the alternative interpretation - that he doesn't really believe it and said it anyway because he thought it would please his audience - is that he is a man of poor judgment and a loud mouth in things he should judge less and speak less on, which goes to my point that Sam did not "bro up" YC, it was already rotten.
      - SyzygistSix 5y ago
anigbrowl 5y ago
Your post is a bit inaccurate. Biggar tweeted about his unhappiness about the behavior of a person in the private group. He received a public response fromt he person in question with a dismissive meme. He in turn responded to that. So, one could argue that the line-jumping-advocate relinquished his privacy in the first place.
- whymauri 5y ago
  I'm under the impression that any public commentary about what goes on inside that forum is generally discouraged, but that's just what I've seen. Although this is an interesting point, for sure.
  - sampo 5y ago
    > I'm under the impression that any public commentary about what goes on inside that forum is generally discouraged When private organizations in their internal culture and functioning deviate too far away from common social norms, you kinda hope that a whistleblower or the press calls them out for it.
  - anigbrowl 5y ago
    That wouldn't surprise me. Don't worry about the downvotes, it's not unusual for votes on a post to oscillate wildly in any sort of hot topic because people often revert to tribalism as they first scan the thread.
  - throwthrowbye 5y ago
    You are correct. YC emphasizes regularly that the forums are private and otherwise the people wouldn’t share as much or give blunter truth. Having seen screenshots of the post in question, it was bad, but it also would have been strange to kick someone out for that. The poster is an asshole and proud of it, but the community seems to have responded directly.
amznthrwaway 5y ago
Read the Paul Graham essay on “What You Can’t Say” and realize that YC culture has things you can’t say. YC culture allows you to say ‘here is how to marginally undermine a public health effort for your own benefit”, but YC culture does not allow you to publicly say “people at YC teach each other how to undermine a public health effort for their own benefit”. Anything that is critical of YC or Paul is heresy. Anything that prioritizes society over a YC participant is heresy. These things can’t be done publicly, or you’ll be cast out of YC. http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

cryptoz 5y ago

I'm also confused. But it seems like the tweet in question is a false story that could be libel/defamation or something? He later issues a 'correction' (why not delete the original wrong tweet?) that says that the story about "advocating for lying to skip lines" is false. [1] I don't have any part of this and I'm confused and don't know what's going on here. But it does not seem like the tweet everyone is focusing on was even true. So the story becomes possibly, that YC kicked someone out for spreading lies about people in their internal community? I don't know. [1] "I was incorrect in saying the 2nd founder lied, and would like to apologize." https://twitter.com/paulbiggar/status/1370144350861135881 https://twitter.com/paulbiggar/status/1370144350861135881

ivanbakel 5y ago
>But it does not seem like the tweet everyone is focusing on was even true. So the story becomes possibly, that YC kicked someone out for spreading lies about people in their internal community? I don't know. It's still partially true - the allegation of lying was wrong, but the allegation of instructing others how to lie is still being made. This is clarified by the tweet that you linked.
- chris11 5y ago
  I didn't quite read it that way. The accusation is that both told other people how to skip the line. My assumption is that the both founders told other people how they could get the vaccine. A more charitable observation would be that the second founder told people how they could get it without waiting in line or lying. The accusation still sounds gross. Though vaccine rollout wasn't great in the bay area. I got an email from my doctor about appointments being available. The ones in the bay area were taken really quickly. Availability was much better in other counties. There were also a couple other replies. One mentioned you could get vaccinated for volunteering for 4 hours. Another mentioned some sites were doing first come first serve.
  - ivanbakel 5y ago
    >The accusation is that both told other people how to skip the line. My assumption is that the both founders told other people how they could get the vaccine. A more charitable observation would be that the second founder told people how they could get it without waiting in line or lying. You're being charitable in the wrong direction, because you're not interpreting the allegations in good faith. What would be the point of taking to Twitter if all the second founder did was instruct people how to get a vaccine, without the component of lying to bypass the queue? Since there would be no point to such an outrage, it's uncharitable to pre-emptively dismiss the contents of the allegations. Whether or not they are eventually shown to be true, they should still be interpreted in the most serious and direct way.

kubb 5y ago

Why is that confusing? If you condemn the in-group publicly, it's a sign of betrayal, and they kick you out. Monkeys strong together, that's all there is to it.

eat_veggies 5y ago
It's cool and reassuring that YC has no principles or morals other than "monkeys strong together"
- kubb 5y ago
  There are no rules about these kinds of things in private organizations, so it defaults to the instinctive human behavior. Whenever you hear about the "greats" of the industry, you can be aware that they rose to prominence through navigating power structures built on such principles.
- asadlionpk 5y ago
  It’s not a bad moral though.
  - dwaltrip 5y ago
    We can do much better.
- ignoramous 5y ago
  (as an outsider looking in) I think, for YC, who pride themselves on their tight-knit alumni network and reach of their partners, in-group bias was always going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Macha 5y ago

Is it really that out of character for a tech VC company to have no objections to "disrupting" government processes?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

tshaddox 5y ago

That's exactly what I would expect. Can you explain why you would expect something else to happen?

minimaxir 5y ago

Per the tweet replies, Paul Biggar's company that YC funded has been defunct, so that likely makes YC's calculus to remove him easier (optics aside).

YuriNiyazov 5y ago
This is the part that I don't understand. CircleCI is alive and well last time I checked.
- minimaxir 5y ago
  Apparently it was a startup wayyyyy back in 2010, before CircleCI: https://techcrunch.com/2010/04/12/ycs-newstilt-aims-to-help-journalists-create-a-business-model-for-content/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/04/12/ycs-newstilt-aims-to-help-...
dang 5y ago
FWIW I don't think that would much affect the decision. In past similar cases, where the startup wasn't defunct, YC has divested. I've never been part of any such decision, but I do know YC and the people who have to make such decisions, and from what I've seen they'd be reasoning from first principles or at least trying to.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

Tenoke 5y ago

I'm guessing he broke an internal rule about talking of what's said in the founders forum, while the founder is breaking unrelated outside rules and being a dick, which isn't as fireable.

dylan604 5y ago
Why is it not though? Intentionally misleading people is how you get Theranos. Being a dick is how you get a TK@Uber as a leader. Neither of those are examples one should follow of "how to be a leader"
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Why would YC care about that? Their ethos is “how to make a boatloat of money”. Theranos would be fine if they weren’t caught out before their IPO.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    That's a very sad commentary on the human condition if you think anything about Theranos would have been "fine". If anyone involved knew what was going on and still pushed for the IPO to get their money, then they need to be hit for fraud. As a collective, we've lost our humanity. I used to think we were losing it, but over the past few years I feel like we've moved past losing and now just lost it completely.
    - hallway_monitor 5y ago
      Humanity as in valuing service to mankind over the abstract point value of accumulating money?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jijji 5y ago

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.

fruityrudy 5y ago

What’s so bad about skipping the line? Priority groups don’t even make sense. It’s some egalitarian crap for the sake of it and more so for buying votes from older ppl. Then we are left with: it’s simply against the rules. And as if people in SF care about that. Why r so many people in SF on these moral crusades anyway. Getting high off enforcing rules and looking down on others. Everyone should be equal…as long as I get my ridiculous salary and elite network. It’s like imposter syndrome for the privileged…so they need to pretend they are for the common man. Good riddance to such crusaders. PG is a boss.

ekianjo 5y ago

Lying to skip lines is probably considered "growth hacking"

koolba 5y ago
It’d likely count as a non-computer system you hacked.
SavantIdiot 5y ago
But he didn't lie. Many clinics are opening up to first-come, first-served because vax rates are dropping and they still have inventory. Feels like drama?
- pdonis 5y ago
  Were they doing that in March, when the incident in question happened?
  - SyzygistSix 5y ago
    Sites that were not getting enough people coming in to use all the doses they had available were doing that in my area. It was not all sites all the time but at a certain point, lots of places switched priority to getting doses to people regardless of demographic so that they didn't spoil. And lots of that info was word of mouth or social media posts, because there was little way to centrally coordinate it.

mdoms 5y ago

Sounds like Biggar was being a massive drama queen and no one wanted to have that kind of toxicity around.

aristophenes 5y ago

The guy who advocated getting the vaccine has chimed in with his side of the story elsewhere in these comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400221 It makes sense because in some states its been basically any adult can walk in and get a shot for months already. I'm surprised there is anywhere in the country left where that is not the case.

jahlove 5y ago
This was not the case back in March.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]