This is getting off-topic, but the US is like the motherland of telling other people how they should behave. Look up any of the "public freakout" videos, they're 80% each side trying to explain why what the other side did was wrong, all the while not realizing that pretty much nobody cares about their opinion and is just there to watch the drama for a few minutes. Every single "Karen" video is full of self-righteousn…
That's all true. But US internet culture has changed dramatically in the past few years. And it's not just "eternal September". I miss the early years. There are still vestiges left. Some public intellectuals still respond to unsolicited email from strangers.
> I miss the early years.
Whatever else was true of the early years, when internet use was a niche thing it wasn't representative of broader US culture sort of by definition. Now it is, or at least much more so.
This is really distressing, especially considering the ongoing public behavior of the original founder. Kicking out Paul seems like the opposite reaction for YC to have. It would be helpful to hear a public comment from them about this situation.
He seems to have not advocated lying though just showing up: https://www.reddit.com/r/oakland/comments/m4bqx9/comment/gqu...
I'm not going to necessarily trust that reddit comment, especially when I know there were plenty instances of people lying about eligibility, and I think it is largely unlikely that most YC founders would have been eligible for this mobile clinic in west Oakland in mid-March.
I’d immediately sack anyone leaking private conversations like this. This isn’t whistle blowing. It’s violating the norms of communication like sharing things said in confidence as gossip.
I’m confused. So YC kicked out the guy who complained about it on Twitter and not the people who advocated for lying to skip lines? Wtf?
I'm guessing it goes like this: 1. Skipping vaccine line and talking about it is not actually against BookFace/YC ToS, or it would be a stretch to apply ToS. 2. Publicly talking about matters inside the private group is against ToS since it breaches privacy. In a way that paints the group negatively, nonetheless. Pretty straightforward. It doesn't really matter *to YC* whether anyone skipped a line or not, what matte…
And it’s why YC doesn’t have the reputation it once did. Letting Sam bro up the institution wasn’t the best decision in hindsight as this incident demonstrates.
The person who the original tweet was referring to (it's not private; they admitted it), just tweeted a GIF about "witnessing karma". https://twitter.com/Prafulfillment/status/140093402468041523... EDIT: Reply on HN by the author: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400221
It has a real "snitches get stiches" vibe to it.
You have no expectation of privacy if you announce (let alone advocate for, or instruct how-to) behaviour against public health policy _during_a_pandemic_.
The contrast with people who have been working hard to match people with appointments couldn't be more stark.
Agreed. When eligibility opened up, we drove 100 miles just to avoid potentially taking doses from people at risk in the metro area. Seemed like a good excuse to get out of the house for a road trip, as well as being the right thing to do. We were able to schedule immediate appointments in an adjacent county populated by hardcore Trumpers. Upon arriving at the drive-through vaccination site, there was only one other…
We don't have full information about this story though. It may well be the case that the YC founder called out for lying about his qualifications for the vaccine was at a vaccination location where there were zero lines and poor community uptake of the vaccine. Idle doses sitting around doing nothing. At this point, the US has so many extra doses that it is shipping millions overseas. Depending on the location and ti…
I live in Oakland. This incident seems to be back in early March. Back then the large vaccination sites were all listed on myturn.ca.gov (ie the Oakland Coliseum). They'd post new batches of appointments and they would be all booked really fast (within minutes or hours). But Curative was also running vaccinations sites in Oakland and Berkeley. They weren't listed on the myturn website, so people didn't know about them. They would post new appointments and they would be available for days, sometimes even available right up until the appointment time. This was during the time when you had to be 65+ or have a health condition. In my social circle there were many ineligible people sending links around for the Curative appointments. There was definitely a mentality of "there are so many open appointments, they're just going to go unused." Whether that was true or not I don't know, but there was definitely a reality that certain vaccine sites that were not integrated into the central database had tons of openings, while people who didn't know how to find the secret links were left to reload myturn.ca.gov constantly hoping to find appointments. It was also public knowledge that nobody ever checked that you qualified with a valid medical condition. So getting a vaccine appointment at that time for a totally healthy 25 year old was as simple as someone texting you a link and clicking a single checkbox to say you had a medical condition. In my small social circle, I know of that happening at least a few times.
I’m confused. So YC kicked out the guy who complained about it on Twitter and not the people who advocated for lying to skip lines? Wtf?
I'm guessing he broke an internal rule about talking of what's said in the founders forum, while the founder is breaking unrelated outside rules and being a dick, which isn't as fireable.
People don't know how to disagree anymore. It's disheartening, because I like a good disagreement and the deep debates that can come out of them ... that is, as long as the conversation is void of emotional temper-tantrums (and in a lot of cases these days, fear of cancel-culture.)
On the internet, anyone can drop in and out of any conversation they want. Combine that concept with anonymity/the ability to disparage people you will never meet, and you've got a recipe for disagreements starting from positions of extreme toxicity.
I agree with you, but this is where it's worth pointing out that really ugly conversations occur on Facebook between people who are clearly identifiable and in many cases acquaintances.