Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't find any website for it. Are you sure it's not just some posting category on Bookface, YC's internal social network?
[flagged]
> According to chatgpt
Oh come on.
Tell HN: YC companies scrape GitHub activity, send spam emails to users
91–100 of 278 posts
Re: Tell HN: YC companies scrape GitHub activity, send spam emails to users
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
i am not sure of anywhere it is illegal . but areas i am familiar with can consider a negative reference to be defamation, thus anyone providing a negative reference should only do so if they are able to defend it (i.e. prove their statement is substantially true, or prove that the statement was honestly believed to be true and published with no malice or reckless disregard). seems risky, at least, to build a whole b…
It's definitely illegal in the UK.
i dont believe that it is illegal to provide a negative reference in the UK, as long as it is honest, factual, and provided in good faith.
from gov.uk:
>"If you think you’ve been given an unfair or misleading reference, you may be able to claim damages in court. Your previous employer must be able to back up the reference, such as by supplying examples of warning letters.
You must be able to show that:
- it’s misleading or inaccurate
-you ‘suffered a loss’ – for example, the withdrawal of a job offer"
which means, if the reference is not misleading and not inaccurate, a negative reference is ok. other uk-based law firms (from a quick google) agree with this interpretation.
Re: Tell HN: YC companies scrape GitHub activity, send spam emails to users
#93I also had unsolicited spam from Vincent Jiang of Aden, another YC company.
Hi Daniel,
I just came across your profile on social media and wondered if you'd be interested in joining our Discord community for AI agent development. Currently, we see that agents break, loop, get lost, hallucinate, and cost a fortune, and therefore built a space where developers can share challenges and insights.Re: Tell HN: YC companies scrape GitHub activity, send spam emails to users
#94Re: Tell HN: YC companies scrape GitHub activity, send spam emails to users
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine thinking in 2026 that an American tech company has ethics.
Only free individual can have strong ethics. There are no free people in capitalism, money is debt after all. Think of applied pressure once you sign under VC money and amount of brainwashing / gaslighting. I sincerely hope my observation is wrong.
If you are going to go down that road: life is debt, and there is no true freedom. We are bound by the needs of our meat-containers, after all.
I don't like unfettered capitalism, but when I consider economies that have existed over time, it certainly looks like constrained capitalism affords the most freedom.
Re: Tell HN: YC companies scrape GitHub activity, send spam emails to users
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
i am not sure of anywhere it is illegal . but areas i am familiar with can consider a negative reference to be defamation, thus anyone providing a negative reference should only do so if they are able to defend it (i.e. prove their statement is substantially true, or prove that the statement was honestly believed to be true and published with no malice or reckless disregard). seems risky, at least, to build a whole b…
There are many definitions of illegal (criminal, civil, regulatory, the much much looser “license to operate” as used in chemical industry, etc). A blacklist seems dubious. I’d advise the founders to get counsel on their obligations under the FCRA, which they may be construed to be regulated by. That said, I believe "Bad News" is an AI hallucination. The most similar company I can find historical news is "Peeple"[0],…
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Re: Tell HN: YC companies scrape GitHub activity, send spam emails to users
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't find any website for it. Are you sure it's not just some posting category on Bookface, YC's internal social network?
[flagged]
GPT:
There are some mentions online of a Y Combinator startup called Bad News, but nothing official or well-documented shows up in public YC lists or press — at least as of the latest searchable sources.
The only place it’s referenced is in a Hacker News thread where someone claimed there was a YC company whose product was a blacklist of employees so other startups wouldn’t hire them, and they said the name was Bad News. But people in that thread couldn’t find any evidence of it, and there aren’t real search results tying that name to an official YC company on YC’s site, their startup directory, or mainstream reports.
Re: Tell HN: YC companies scrape GitHub activity, send spam emails to users
#98Maybe a dumb question, but isn't this trivially solved with this .gitconfig? [user] name = lordgrenville email = +lordgrenville@users.noreply.github.com
Not all projects are hosted at github. You also might want to receve relevant mail from fellow developers.
Fair point. Pretty sure there is a way to have a few .gitconfig files, with the active one based on the remote URL domain, but it is more work.
Re: Tell HN: YC companies scrape GitHub activity, send spam emails to users
#99Re: Tell HN: YC companies scrape GitHub activity, send spam emails to users
#100YC is basically advising their startups to engage in shitty business practices, like trying to hire UK staff for half the salary and expecting 7 day weeks.