Tell HN: Y Combinator backing AI company to abuse factory workers

Further you have no evidence to back up your claim that anything outside of the Air Force and nukes are all that are required to properly deter threats.

I would imagine that you also have no credible evidence that "Anything else being developed is for political suppression or fueling regional wars and imperial bullshit."

If you don't want to be involved in developing weapons then that's fine, nobody is forcing you to do so. To claim someone as anti-ethical because they chose to do so in a legal way may be your opinion but surely not a fact.

I'm biased of course, but when I read "$X is backing $Y to do $Z", I read $Z as what $X is specifically and intentionally backing $Y to do. In this case, that's not accurate. YC would never specifically back a startup to "abuse factory workers"—that would be absurd. Nor is the phrase neutral; it's obviously accusatory.

HN titles aren't supposed to be used to build miniature prosecution cases. On some other sites, it's fine to use titles that way—it certainly maximizes attention, which is great for those sorts of forums, but on HN titles are supposed to use neutral, descriptive language—and then people can use the comments to express their interpretation and their views.

(Edit: Actually, even on HN it's sometimes informally fine to do that too—it is a grey area but sort of light grey, if you see what I mean. That is, sometimes a submission will use a baity title, this helps the story get attention and make the front page, and then moderators will 'sand' the title back down to neutral language and the thread can stay on the front page. We do that when it's a good story for HN—if it's not, we'd be more likely to downweight the article off the front page. The trouble in the present case is that neither of those options are available to us when the story is about YC and/or a YC startup.)

I haven't studied the details so I don't know what a neutral phrase would have been in this case. Some commenters have suggested things like "production line monitoring". I'm sure it's true that technology like this can turn into a Taylorist nightmare, but there surely are also ways to use it humanely, so in this case the real story seems to be that the founders published a video that backfired badly on the internet. Hopefully they will learn from this and not only alter their marketing, but maybe even change the product to be less likely to be abused.

But that's just my superficial take and like I said, I'm biased. More importantly, I appreciate that your intentions were better than I assumed they were and am grateful that you clarified that. Even after years of doing this job, I'm constantly still learning to make fewer assumptions. It's crazy how hard that is!

You’d have to be pretty extreme to watch that video and come to the conclusion in the title of this thread. You would only need to have ever seen video before to be like “man these guys didn’t even just google ‘videography tips’”.

I'm not trying to make a decision here on right vs. wrong just pointing out that most people _say_ they care but they're not really willing to do much about it.

Fair! I agree with you and I hadn’t realised the sentence as is was accusing Y Combinator in that sense. My intention was something along the lines of “Tell HN: Y Combinator backing AI company whose product aims to abuse factory workers” but it was too long and some nuance was lost in the trimming.

> Nor is the phrase neutral; it's obviously accusatory.

Again, I agree. But as I mentioned before, I also don’t see a non-critical stance which would make the situation worth commenting on, and I do believe it should be commented on. The only reason it’s worth commenting at all is because it’s bad.

> Some commenters have suggested things like "production line monitoring".

Which is a phrase so sterile and euphemistic it immediately made me think of George Carlin’s bit on soft language.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=o25I2fzFGoY

Also, I disagree with that description because it fails to capture the point (see below).

> I'm sure it's true that technology like this can turn into a Taylorist nightmare, but there surely are also ways to use it humanely

The crux of the matter to me is that this is inhumane by design. It’s not just the video, their page on YC’s website makes it patently clear via the written word they care about factory owners but not the workers. This is neither a marketing problem nor an issue of bad clients abusing the product—the founders plainly described how they intend the product to be used, and that use is inhumane. Which is why I criticised the company and the founders above the technology.

> Even after years of doing this job, I'm constantly still learning to make fewer assumptions. It's crazy how hard that is!

Believe me, I understand. Over the years I have also had to do a lot of internet moderation myself, and you are a big influence on my approach. There is little doubt in my mind that your intentions are pure and you genuinely care for what is best for the community. If we had one of you for each internet forum, the world would be a better place. Thank you for all that you do, and for your commitment to remaining humble and fair.