Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's clear to everyone how the mediums are different. What's not clear is how subjective decisions CNN makes about what to air are acceptable, but subjective decisions HN makes about what to allow on the front page aren't. What's especially weird about this argument is that the US media market is in fact in the middle of a giant debate about how acceptable CNN and Fox News's editorial decisions are. It's not…
Thank you, I understand where you're coming from now. Let me clarify. The difference is because CNN makes a subjective editorial decision about what to air. Their content is curated and prepared by paid staff. The success of CNN is entirely built on the talent and hard work of these people. There's a whole side discussion about the ethical responsibilities of CNN we can have, but let's set that aside and just disting…
Your recourse, if you don't like how they're managing it, is to start your own site, or to move to a different site. Indeed, if value on HN primarily comes from its users, as you say, it's hard to imagine a more powerful recourse to have.
Tangentially, I think HN's value to YC is hugely overblown. YC has been privately telling batch companies not to participate here for almost the whole time the site has existed. The fundamental key to YC's success is being first to fully commit to a market for small investments in marginal startups. It was an extremely good investment thesis, and it compounds dramatically every year as the value of the alumni network increases.
YC could kill off HN tomorrow and it is unlikely it would harm their returns at all. If you're not close to SFBA tech company investing it's easy to miss the extent to which YC is currently running the table on small startup investing, and none of that has anything to do with how HN is moderated.