31–40 of 48 posts
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23285793
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
My humble perspective, HN serves several purposes: 1) Top of the funnel lead gen for emerging companies (for YC to invest in). 2) Persistent advertising for the YC brand. You can’t use HN without associating it with Y Combinator and by being useful it brings in millions of views to the brand at relatively little cost 3) A proprietary way to learn more about the founders they invest in. I’ve read a users HN profile (w…
The biggest benefit is market manipulation and collusion. What better than to run a "news site", know what your users (who many are C levels, or VC projects by YC) are watching and how and when they are commenting. By running that, they can glean an impressive amount of proprietary information. YC can also control the narrative. "Voting ring detectors", shadowbans, blacklist names on articles all have a real and a hi…
Can't you do this on any forum by having your co-conspirators install some sort of a userscript/userstyle? I guess it's more convenient to do it on the site yourself if you own it, but it's not exactly that much of a competitive advantage.
Interestingly no one suggested YC could actively contacts inventors which just share their work/research with the world and suggest mentoring or drive toward business. It could be seen as a super early lead generator. How common/possible in this scenario?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The biggest benefit is market manipulation and collusion. What better than to run a "news site", know what your users (who many are C levels, or VC projects by YC) are watching and how and when they are commenting. By running that, they can glean an impressive amount of proprietary information. YC can also control the narrative. "Voting ring detectors", shadowbans, blacklist names on articles all have a real and a hi…
> By running that, they can glean an impressive amount of proprietary information. Anything that's posted by a company's founders in a public forum can hardly be considered "proprietary information". Anyone in the world can read anything on HN as easily as Twitter, Reddit, etc.
My humble perspective, HN serves several purposes: 1) Top of the funnel lead gen for emerging companies (for YC to invest in). 2) Persistent advertising for the YC brand. You can’t use HN without associating it with Y Combinator and by being useful it brings in millions of views to the brand at relatively little cost 3) A proprietary way to learn more about the founders they invest in. I’ve read a users HN profile (w…
The biggest benefit is market manipulation and collusion. What better than to run a "news site", know what your users (who many are C levels, or VC projects by YC) are watching and how and when they are commenting. By running that, they can glean an impressive amount of proprietary information. YC can also control the narrative. "Voting ring detectors", shadowbans, blacklist names on articles all have a real and a hi…
Also sorry, but there are no hidden reasons. Here's why: we don't do things that aren't defensible to the community in the first place. That way when questions come up, we can answer them publicly in good conscience. Maybe the answers won't convince you (though we can dream!) but I believe that the bulk of the community does find them convincing, because if they didn't we'd never hear the end of it. Occasionally we screw up and do something that the community strongly dislikes, but in that case the solution is clear: say sorry and stop doing it.
The voting ring detector prevents abuses like people upvoting their own or friends' posts. Shadowbanning is mostly for new accounts that show signs of being spammers or trolls; if an account has an established history, we say that we're banning it and explain why. I don't know what "blacklist names on articles" means but anything like that would have an easily explainable reason too.
There's plenty of transparency in the sense that there's no question people can't get an answer to if they simply ask. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... We answer such questions every day, just like I'm doing here, though you didn't ask.
Sinister terms like "market manipulation", "collusion", "control the narrative" are impossible to answer because they don't mean anything specific. If you or anyone were to spell out exactly what you mean by them, it would be easy to clarify what we do and don't do, and why.
YC founders don't collaborate as a bloc on HN and the same anti-voting-ring and other anti-abuse measures apply to them as to all users. pg added the orange usernames in the early days of HN and YC, as a way to help the early YC community get to know each other. It's a perk, for sure, but more a kind of flair than some sort of secret power.
Have I missed anything?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've seen a couple of popular posts removed from the front page. The last one was criticizing Apple.
Sure, HN is a curated site. Posts get removed from the front page all the time. This can be because of user flags, software action, and/or moderator action, in any permutation. Edit: we don't moderate HN based on who is being criticized or praised, be it Apple or anyone else. If you're noticing stories criticizing Apple getting removed, you're probably a critic of Apple. If you were a fan of Apple, you'd notice stori…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, HN is a curated site. Posts get removed from the front page all the time. This can be because of user flags, software action, and/or moderator action, in any permutation. Edit: we don't moderate HN based on who is being criticized or praised, be it Apple or anyone else. If you're noticing stories criticizing Apple getting removed, you're probably a critic of Apple. If you were a fan of Apple, you'd notice stori…
Yep, but it feels a lot more "curated" lately.
It may not be consciously built towards this purpose, but HN serves primarily to spread the silicon valley, get-rich quick, startup business, and entrepreneur culture among software engineers and other technology experts. YC and other VCs can't continue to exist if people don't continue to believe in the mythology of silicon valley. Who the hell will work ridiculous hours and gamble with their livelihood to make some…
If it’s anything it’s content marketing for YC. I suspect it’s origin is that it was just something pg wanted.