The quoted book was being purposefully colorful and inflammatory for literary effect, but it still doesn’t make any claims of investors being “blacklisted” just

The quoted book was being purposefully colorful and inflammatory for literary effect, but it still doesn’t make any claims of investors being “blacklisted” just because they said something unflattering about YC. (“Disseminating unflattering portraits” implies some kind of organised campaign to damage YC, and I have no idea if that really happened or if it’s just part of the colorful/exaggerated writing). The only cases I know of where an investor was banished from Demo Day/YC’s network was for acting in bad faith towards founders. If YC banished investors who had a track record of being great to founders, they would be doing a disservice to founders, and therefore acting against YC’s own interests. That aside, my original comment doesn’t contradict anything in the article (I can’t speak for the entire book - honestly when I tried reading it I couldn’t get past the first few pages).