8 ms·

Y Combinator and the Negative Externalities of Hackernews

64 points by sequoia 12y ago

vaishaksuresh 12y ago
Sexism is something that is rampant in the whole tech industry. I feel bad about it, but I don't see how YC or HN is responsible for policing the posts. Sure, you could have a report button and couple of mods to look at them and approve or reject. That model however is not scalable and downright silly. The bigger issue is with the society and people's mindset and it is up to the people to not be sexist. Having said that, I don't think any business has to do anything special for being inclusive to sex/race/gender etc. Businesses run on profits, talent generates profits. Sure, capable people should not be denied opportunity, but incapable people should not get preferential treatment and held against a lower standard.
- comrh 12y ago
  "...incapable people should not get preferential treatment and held against a lower standard." That is a fallacy. Certain types of sex/race/genders get special treatment now, often called "privilege", because of a history of systematic repression of other people. People are just trying to make the field actually level, not give preferential treatment to "incapable people".
  - vaishaksuresh 12y ago
    So in the process of making it level, the playing field is being changed to be favorable to certain individuals? If something changes by giving away opportunities to less qualified people, because their predecessors had been systemically repressed, it is probably the ego/guilt of the perpetrators. Provide extra opportunities to the current generation to develop and improve , but don't take it away from qualified people in the name of diversity/inclusivity. If a man and a woman apply for a job in all male startup, hire the most qualified person, not the person who makes your workforce more diverse.
    - comrh 12y ago
      THEY are being repressed, not only their predecessors. And to "hire the most qualified person" "denies the role of personal connections, wealth, background, gender, race, or education in an individual's success"[1]. It is overly simplistic to just say "hire the qualified person" when the person is qualified due to a huge amount of historical advantages. Do you really think there are so few women in tech because all the men are just more qualified? http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/02/06/272646267/how-the-meritocracy-myth-affects-women-in-technology http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/02/06/272646...
      - vaishaksuresh 12y ago
        The right thing then would be to enable such individuals with disadvantages to become qualified. We can go on and on about how it is a vicious circle and all that, but IMHO, the remedy is not providing opportunities to less qualified people, but take measures to educate and make them competent. Relavant initiative [1] [2] [1]. https://developers.google.com/women-techmakers/ https://developers.google.com/women-techmakers/ [2]. http://www.google.com/diversity/for-the-future.html#research-around-girls-and-computer-science http://www.google.com/diversity/for-the-future.html#research...
        comrh 12y ago
        "the remedy is not providing opportunities to less qualified people" You keep saying this like it is a fact or that anyone is arguing for this. It is a complete fallacy.
- danilocampos 12y ago
  >Having said that, I don't think any business has to do anything special for being inclusive to sex/race/gender etc. That's nice. The guy in charge of Y Combinator disagrees with you. Which is the whole point of the post. http://blog.ycombinator.com/diversity-and-startups http://blog.ycombinator.com/diversity-and-startups
  - solipsism 12y ago
    Wonderfully said. People are failing to realize that the point is that YCombinator is being internally inconsistent. Edit: allegedly being internally inconsistent
sequoia 12y ago
the tl;dr is 1. HN culture is (generally) sexist & racist, a "bro-fest" if you will. 2. ycomb profits from HN 3. ycomb says they're against sexism etc.: “We—the tech industry as a whole—need to fix this. Most importantly, it’s an ethical issue.” ... 4. ...but there seems to be no legitimate effort by YC to alter the culture & signal what's acceptable behavior (i.e. don't be racist) on hackernews.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 12y ago
  "bro-fest" is the most racist thing I've seen on hn this month, but maybe I'm not reading as many articles as I could. I feel like you ought to have the freedom to say it though. How on earth is 4. going to happen especially with an international crowd? Is any organization doing 4. adequately? Is YC supposed to educate the whole world on how "bro-fest" is PC but [something else]-fest is not?
  - austinhutch 12y ago
    Something lost in translation here? Bro-fest, meaning males hanging out together. Where is the racism? http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=brofest http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=brofest
- uncoder0 12y ago
  I think expanding the ability to down-vote to more people would help show the true attitude on HN. Right now I can only push things up or flag them and often times don't have the time or fortitude to start a comment thread arguing with an ignorant racist. Currently at 419 karma I don't have the ability to simply press a downvote and get that trash grayed out or pushed to the bottom of the page. A technical solution to a social problem rarely works but in this case I think it'd help. If what the OP implies is true, and it surely is to some degree, most of the people who have the ability to control visibility (downvote) would have achieved that ability through participation in the echo chamber. Achieving enough karma to downvote seems rather hard, if not impossible, if you're not subscribed to the prevailing groupthink. But maybe this is me, as always, trying to find an engineering solution to the problem.
bytecoin 12y ago
I just lost a minute of my life
angersock 12y ago
So, this is all well and good, and am sure the outrage plays well with certain circles. But, let's look at things from a business perspective--because, ultimately, that's what YC is: a business. Let's assume that HN is a terrible place where sexism and racism are easily found--consider that the ability to review people's posting histories is a really good datapoint of figuring out whether or not they're somebody you want to work with. If an applicant applies with a posting history rife with sexism and racism, then maybe they're not going to be asked back. It's a chance to let people show their true colors, and many people are bigoted shitbags. So, even looking past that, the author raises the point that YC has a portfolio north of 30B USD. So, erm, maybe whatever they're doing is working? Maybe, just maybe, sexism and racism and everything else is not really that relevant to running a successful business. I don't want to go full libertariloon on this and go claim that the free market thus proves those are non-issues, but from a business standpoint they don't seem to be mattering. A criticism of "but but but imagine how much better things could be if they stomped it out!" is a non-starter, because it's playing in what-ifs. If HN does have a problem, it's that the downvote system is bullshit and broken and enables people to hivemind more easily. PG screwed up, in my opinion, when he gave a blessing on giving downvotes based on disagreement instead of civility or relevance. The moderation system is opaque and broken, though much less broken thanks to people like dang. Mostly, I think, the single systemic issue of HN is that people are not self-selecting for good technical content, and are so closed-minded that useful discussion of non-technical content becomes boring, tedious, and prone to flaming. EDIT: Thank you whoever gave that downvote without explanation for helping to demonstrate my point!
- sequoia 12y ago
  'OK so maybe there's sexism & racism but they're making money so what's the problem?' I think the author (and I agree with him here) sees the racism & sexism itself as being a problem. Nowhere does he argue that the problem is that racism/sexism are bad for profits. Personally I don't need the market to tell me if racism & sexism are bad and I doubt that you do either.
  - angersock 12y ago
    Sexism and racism are views on life, much like religion and capitalism--I don't have to agree with them without respecting them as views held by other people. Silly, stupid views that I disagree with and find counter-productive, but it is their right to think in that wrongheaded fashion and talk about it. I agree that making policy decisions based on racism and sexism, especially when the affected population has no alternative but to be subject to those decisions (say, no other place to look for work, no other police force to seek protection from, etc.), is wrong. That said, I find it just as wrong to brand other people as bad or evil because they've got some silly view. To put it quite crudely: The primary job of YC is not the policing of ideas and thoughts of people posting on HN beyond keeping things relatively civil.
daveloyall 12y ago
I thought I was the only one!
jabrams 12y ago
Seeing a Facebook/Twitter photo of the person you are about to flame, before you press post, would probably have an effect, see: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9424-big-brother-eyes-make-us-act-more-honestly.html#.VCuguVdgl0s http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9424-big-brother-eyes-...
BrandonM 12y ago
I'm surprised that the author could write such a cherry-picked article with a straight face. I clicked through to the six links in the twitter comments. Here's a summary of who made them: 1. bobcostas55: member for 146 days, 42 karma 2. gph: member for 997 days, 634 karma 3. lulzwat1111: member for 32 days, -8 karma, comment downvoted into oblivion 4. aianus: member for 588 days, 369 karma 5. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8372411 I honestly don't see the problem here? 6. nickthemagicman: member for 690 days, 241 karma, comment downvoted into oblivion For context, I have over 4500 karma (I only comment a few times a month and don't submit much), and the HN user with the 100th highest karma has over 16,000. In other words, these comments are not representative of the entire community, or of even a single medium-profile user. The vast majority of the time, ignorant comments are met with multiple replies setting the person straight, or with downvotes (as I do, for anything that is insulting or offensive). Hacker News intends to attract a technical audience. The community includes a wide variety of people, some of which are 16-to-25-year-old men who have poor socialization skills. Some of them (and some others, certainly) have naive, twisted beliefs, or they are just unaware of their privileged position in society. Others are from different countries that have old-fashioned gender norms. I don't think this is a problem unique to HN or even to tech. I claim that you could just as easily write an article like this about fraternity or country club communities, if their communications were indexed for the entire world to see. At least in the case of HN, you have a large number of dissenting viewpoints. I actually think it's good that short-sighted individuals express their bigoted views. It gives others a chance to provide them with some perspective. Even more, though, prudent individuals who think the same thing have the opportunity to have their viewpoints changed as well. Also, seeing the extreme version of one of your views can cause you to pause and reconsider it. Personally, I was quite libertarian and lacking in perspective on several issues (e.g., end user empathy, social welfare, the importance of tact) when I joined Hacker News 7-1/2 years ago. Of course I can't give all the credit to HN, but it has definitely had some positive effect in improving my personality and broadening my perspective.
- metavida 12y ago
  Agreed that HN is not facing a unique problem of *ist comments/members. However, as the OP points out, given that the leadership of Y Combinator say that "Sexism in tech is real. ... We—the tech industry as a whole—need to fix this. ... And speaking for YC, it’s also in our best interest."[1] it makes sense that HN should be taking concrete steps to make the community a safe place for diversity. It doesn't really matter whether or not a representative portion of the community is behaving poorly. If a subset of the HN community is making HN inhospitable to the diverse members HN seeks to support, that is the problem that the leadership & the community should be trying to solve. [1] http://blog.ycombinator.com/diversity-and-startups http://blog.ycombinator.com/diversity-and-startups
dragonwriter 12y ago
> Hacker News has developed a reputation for toxic sexism and other insensitivity toward folks outside the Silicon Valley in-group of white, upper-class men. I don't see much evidence that this is particularly true; sure, I see people that complain that it is, and a roughly equal number who complain that HN is overly swamped with politically correct "social justice warriors" and biased against white, upper-class men. Personally I think its rather balanced and mostly civil, with a few extremes on every conceivable side, with effective moderation (central and community-based) which both keeps a lid on the problems all-around and keeps the level of bias to a lower level than you'd expect given the rather extreme imbalance in the community to which HN is directed.

64 points by sequoia 12y ago

Sexism is something that is rampant in the whole tech industry. I feel bad about it, but I don't see how YC or HN is responsible for policing the posts. Sure, you could have a report button and couple of mods to look at them and approve or reject. That model however is not scalable and downright silly. The bigger issue is with the society and people's mindset and it is up to the people to not be sexist. Having said that, I don't think any business has to do anything special for being inclusive to sex/race/gender etc. Businesses run on profits, talent generates profits. Sure, capable people should not be denied opportunity, but incapable people should not get preferential treatment and held against a lower standard.

comrh 12y ago
"...incapable people should not get preferential treatment and held against a lower standard." That is a fallacy. Certain types of sex/race/genders get special treatment now, often called "privilege", because of a history of systematic repression of other people. People are just trying to make the field actually level, not give preferential treatment to "incapable people".
- vaishaksuresh 12y ago
  So in the process of making it level, the playing field is being changed to be favorable to certain individuals? If something changes by giving away opportunities to less qualified people, because their predecessors had been systemically repressed, it is probably the ego/guilt of the perpetrators. Provide extra opportunities to the current generation to develop and improve , but don't take it away from qualified people in the name of diversity/inclusivity. If a man and a woman apply for a job in all male startup, hire the most qualified person, not the person who makes your workforce more diverse.
  - comrh 12y ago
    THEY are being repressed, not only their predecessors. And to "hire the most qualified person" "denies the role of personal connections, wealth, background, gender, race, or education in an individual's success"[1]. It is overly simplistic to just say "hire the qualified person" when the person is qualified due to a huge amount of historical advantages. Do you really think there are so few women in tech because all the men are just more qualified? http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/02/06/272646267/how-the-meritocracy-myth-affects-women-in-technology http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/02/06/272646...
    - vaishaksuresh 12y ago
      The right thing then would be to enable such individuals with disadvantages to become qualified. We can go on and on about how it is a vicious circle and all that, but IMHO, the remedy is not providing opportunities to less qualified people, but take measures to educate and make them competent. Relavant initiative [1] [2] [1]. https://developers.google.com/women-techmakers/ https://developers.google.com/women-techmakers/ [2]. http://www.google.com/diversity/for-the-future.html#research-around-girls-and-computer-science http://www.google.com/diversity/for-the-future.html#research...
      - comrh 12y ago
        "the remedy is not providing opportunities to less qualified people" You keep saying this like it is a fact or that anyone is arguing for this. It is a complete fallacy.
danilocampos 12y ago
>Having said that, I don't think any business has to do anything special for being inclusive to sex/race/gender etc. That's nice. The guy in charge of Y Combinator disagrees with you. Which is the whole point of the post. http://blog.ycombinator.com/diversity-and-startups http://blog.ycombinator.com/diversity-and-startups
- solipsism 12y ago
  Wonderfully said. People are failing to realize that the point is that YCombinator is being internally inconsistent. Edit: allegedly being internally inconsistent

sequoia 12y ago

the tl;dr is 1. HN culture is (generally) sexist & racist, a "bro-fest" if you will. 2. ycomb profits from HN 3. ycomb says they're against sexism etc.: “We—the tech industry as a whole—need to fix this. Most importantly, it’s an ethical issue.” ... 4. ...but there seems to be no legitimate effort by YC to alter the culture & signal what's acceptable behavior (i.e. don't be racist) on hackernews.

0xdeadbeefbabe 12y ago
"bro-fest" is the most racist thing I've seen on hn this month, but maybe I'm not reading as many articles as I could. I feel like you ought to have the freedom to say it though. How on earth is 4. going to happen especially with an international crowd? Is any organization doing 4. adequately? Is YC supposed to educate the whole world on how "bro-fest" is PC but [something else]-fest is not?
- austinhutch 12y ago
  Something lost in translation here? Bro-fest, meaning males hanging out together. Where is the racism? http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=brofest http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=brofest
uncoder0 12y ago
I think expanding the ability to down-vote to more people would help show the true attitude on HN. Right now I can only push things up or flag them and often times don't have the time or fortitude to start a comment thread arguing with an ignorant racist. Currently at 419 karma I don't have the ability to simply press a downvote and get that trash grayed out or pushed to the bottom of the page. A technical solution to a social problem rarely works but in this case I think it'd help. If what the OP implies is true, and it surely is to some degree, most of the people who have the ability to control visibility (downvote) would have achieved that ability through participation in the echo chamber. Achieving enough karma to downvote seems rather hard, if not impossible, if you're not subscribed to the prevailing groupthink. But maybe this is me, as always, trying to find an engineering solution to the problem.

bytecoin 12y ago

I just lost a minute of my life

angersock 12y ago

So, this is all well and good, and am sure the outrage plays well with certain circles. But, let's look at things from a business perspective--because, ultimately, that's what YC is: a business. Let's assume that HN is a terrible place where sexism and racism are easily found--consider that the ability to review people's posting histories is a really good datapoint of figuring out whether or not they're somebody you want to work with. If an applicant applies with a posting history rife with sexism and racism, then maybe they're not going to be asked back. It's a chance to let people show their true colors, and many people are bigoted shitbags. So, even looking past that, the author raises the point that YC has a portfolio north of 30B USD. So, erm, maybe whatever they're doing is working? Maybe, just maybe, sexism and racism and everything else is not really that relevant to running a successful business. I don't want to go full libertariloon on this and go claim that the free market thus proves those are non-issues, but from a business standpoint they don't seem to be mattering. A criticism of "but but but imagine how much better things could be if they stomped it out!" is a non-starter, because it's playing in what-ifs. If HN does have a problem, it's that the downvote system is bullshit and broken and enables people to hivemind more easily. PG screwed up, in my opinion, when he gave a blessing on giving downvotes based on disagreement instead of civility or relevance. The moderation system is opaque and broken, though much less broken thanks to people like dang. Mostly, I think, the single systemic issue of HN is that people are not self-selecting for good technical content, and are so closed-minded that useful discussion of non-technical content becomes boring, tedious, and prone to flaming. EDIT: Thank you whoever gave that downvote without explanation for helping to demonstrate my point!

sequoia 12y ago
'OK so maybe there's sexism & racism but they're making money so what's the problem?' I think the author (and I agree with him here) sees the racism & sexism itself as being a problem. Nowhere does he argue that the problem is that racism/sexism are bad for profits. Personally I don't need the market to tell me if racism & sexism are bad and I doubt that you do either.
- angersock 12y ago
  Sexism and racism are views on life, much like religion and capitalism--I don't have to agree with them without respecting them as views held by other people. Silly, stupid views that I disagree with and find counter-productive, but it is their right to think in that wrongheaded fashion and talk about it. I agree that making policy decisions based on racism and sexism, especially when the affected population has no alternative but to be subject to those decisions (say, no other place to look for work, no other police force to seek protection from, etc.), is wrong. That said, I find it just as wrong to brand other people as bad or evil because they've got some silly view. To put it quite crudely: The primary job of YC is not the policing of ideas and thoughts of people posting on HN beyond keeping things relatively civil.

daveloyall 12y ago

I thought I was the only one!

jabrams 12y ago

Seeing a Facebook/Twitter photo of the person you are about to flame, before you press post, would probably have an effect, see: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9424-big-brother-eyes-make-us-act-more-honestly.html#.VCuguVdgl0s http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9424-big-brother-eyes-...

BrandonM 12y ago

I'm surprised that the author could write such a cherry-picked article with a straight face. I clicked through to the six links in the twitter comments. Here's a summary of who made them: 1. bobcostas55: member for 146 days, 42 karma 2. gph: member for 997 days, 634 karma 3. lulzwat1111: member for 32 days, -8 karma, comment downvoted into oblivion 4. aianus: member for 588 days, 369 karma 5. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8372411 I honestly don't see the problem here? 6. nickthemagicman: member for 690 days, 241 karma, comment downvoted into oblivion For context, I have over 4500 karma (I only comment a few times a month and don't submit much), and the HN user with the 100th highest karma has over 16,000. In other words, these comments are not representative of the entire community, or of even a single medium-profile user. The vast majority of the time, ignorant comments are met with multiple replies setting the person straight, or with downvotes (as I do, for anything that is insulting or offensive). Hacker News intends to attract a technical audience. The community includes a wide variety of people, some of which are 16-to-25-year-old men who have poor socialization skills. Some of them (and some others, certainly) have naive, twisted beliefs, or they are just unaware of their privileged position in society. Others are from different countries that have old-fashioned gender norms. I don't think this is a problem unique to HN or even to tech. I claim that you could just as easily write an article like this about fraternity or country club communities, if their communications were indexed for the entire world to see. At least in the case of HN, you have a large number of dissenting viewpoints. I actually think it's good that short-sighted individuals express their bigoted views. It gives others a chance to provide them with some perspective. Even more, though, prudent individuals who think the same thing have the opportunity to have their viewpoints changed as well. Also, seeing the extreme version of one of your views can cause you to pause and reconsider it. Personally, I was quite libertarian and lacking in perspective on several issues (e.g., end user empathy, social welfare, the importance of tact) when I joined Hacker News 7-1/2 years ago. Of course I can't give all the credit to HN, but it has definitely had some positive effect in improving my personality and broadening my perspective.

metavida 12y ago
Agreed that HN is not facing a unique problem of *ist comments/members. However, as the OP points out, given that the leadership of Y Combinator say that "Sexism in tech is real. ... We—the tech industry as a whole—need to fix this. ... And speaking for YC, it’s also in our best interest."[1] it makes sense that HN should be taking concrete steps to make the community a safe place for diversity. It doesn't really matter whether or not a representative portion of the community is behaving poorly. If a subset of the HN community is making HN inhospitable to the diverse members HN seeks to support, that is the problem that the leadership & the community should be trying to solve. [1] http://blog.ycombinator.com/diversity-and-startups http://blog.ycombinator.com/diversity-and-startups

dragonwriter 12y ago

> Hacker News has developed a reputation for toxic sexism and other insensitivity toward folks outside the Silicon Valley in-group of white, upper-class men. I don't see much evidence that this is particularly true; sure, I see people that complain that it is, and a roughly equal number who complain that HN is overly swamped with politically correct "social justice warriors" and biased against white, upper-class men. Personally I think its rather balanced and mostly civil, with a few extremes on every conceivable side, with effective moderation (central and community-based) which both keeps a lid on the problems all-around and keeps the level of bias to a lower level than you'd expect given the rather extreme imbalance in the community to which HN is directed.