Comment by dang
10 years ago
A word about why Pinboard is not included. We spent a long time thinking about this, since the original application did sound trollish, but comments like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11443463) are Maciej's style, and he was simply practicing it. That part is not a problem--as readers, we enjoy it too, and creative cleverness has always been prized on HN. I both take Maciej at his word that he wasn't trolling and Kevin at his word that he tried to find a way to accept Pinboard into YCF and in the end just couldn't.
We're going to have a community discussion about things that didn't go so well with this first Apply HN experiment, but I'm not sure I'd put this in that category. I'm glad that we chose to believe the serious parts of what Maciej posted. I think it was the right call, I still believe them, and under similar circumstances would do the same again. It's not always easy to tell the joking bits apart from the serious bits, but that goes with the territory.
I call shenanigans.
The way this experiment was presented, the Hacker News community would be allowed to select two YC Fellowship recipients. According to the announcement, "all the interviewing and evaluating will be done in regular HN threads."
But that's not what happened here. I won the voting by a yuuuge margin, and then the vote was nullified in a vape-filled room after it became clear that Hacker News might have its own agenda, separate from YC.
Accusations of soliciting votes by tweeting the HN threads would carry weight with me if there had been any published guidelines about what kind of publicity was allowed. But rules about "vote brigading" on HN are intentionally kept secret.
People have repeatedly accused me of trolling, but I don't think it's me who just trolled you all.
I want my twenty grand.
You're right to single out that sentence, or rather that word "all" in "All the interviewing and evaluating will be done in regular HN threads". We didn't stick to that, and I'm sorry. That's precisely what we changed, and yes we changed it at the last minute.
I didn't think of this experiment as having fixed rules, but rather as something we'd figure out as we went along. I tried to make that clear up front: "Note that word experiment! We'll start small and figure it out as we go. But here are the initial conditions." I can see why that wasn't enough.
It occurs to me only now that "figure it out as we go" and "changing the rules" are the same thing. So yes. We changed the rules, and I'm sorry.
The only catch with this is that "Note that word experiment! We'll start small and figure it out as we go. But here are the initial conditions." can very easily be taken to mean "we'll start small this time, and adjust things for the next time, figuring it out as we go." That's how I, and seemingly some others, interpreted it.
"We'll change things next time based on the results of this experiment" and "We'll change things this time as we see fit and appropriate" are very different, though your initial statement can be read as implying either.
I don't even think one is better than the other - I would just be more careful about communicating which it really is, next time. You guys are free to do what you want, heh. This entire "debacle," if you can even call it that, is actually a great case study in how and why clear communication is so important. The problem wasn't the decision that was made, but rather how it was communicated.
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> That's precisely what we changed, and yes we changed it at the last minute.
no rule of law -> automatic bullshit.
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According to the announcement, "all the interviewing and evaluating will be done in regular HN threads."
According to the same announcement, "We can talk about this in the comments, but to answer one question I know will come up: Upvotes are an important factor but they're too brittle to rely on exclusively; doing so would encourage the wrong kind of trying to game the system."
They said from the start that votes alone would not decide the results.
The overwhelming sentiment in the HN comments was that Pinboard deserved a slot.
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Both Dan and Maciej are personal friends of mine, and it's uncomfortable to see them at odds.
But Maciej is right.
I think, in the spirit of the community, you should provide some argument for why you think that, rather than just state your judgement.
From a fairly outsider perspective, Maciej/idlewords seems to dislike SV & VC culture (for lots of reasonable reasons) and YC by extension, and is trying to joke/troll here as a form of protest or publicity; OK.
On the other side, the YC/HN guys are actually trying to do something innovative, with YC fellows which is more accessible than vanilla YC (can do remotely), and now with a community choice, which is a step in a more innovative/accessible direction again.
Surely this is a step in the right direction? If not, could someone explain why? If they are trying to make good faith steps in the right direction, and someone is trolling them (by which I mean for humor/protest, not bad intentions), isn't it fair enough to exclude that application?
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Right about what exactly? The deal was not "we'll give $20k to whoever gets the most upvotes." It was about participating in a YC program, which this person doesn't seem to have any interest in, or at least wants to feign complete disinterest. I'm glad a spot was not wasted on him based on his attitude alone.
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>Accusations of soliciting votes by tweeting the HN threads would carry weight with me if there had been any published guidelines about what kind of publicity was allowed.
Sure: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11442647
P.S. I voted for Pinboard.
That's the problem with with this. You know and I know that posting a Twitter message about your HN post is against the rules, but that's because we're HN nerds. Maciej isn't.
I understand completely why the complete rulebook on how you can't and can't promote your posts isn't posted clearly on the site. Voting ring suppression is an arms race, and posting the current rules helps the vote-ringers.
But a general statement about not soliciting support for applications could have been made clearer. And, more importantly, the vote ring really had nothing to do with this. Kevin Hale didn't want Maciej in the program. That's all there was to it.
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Your reply to Kevin in the cited conversation (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11441978) was 3 sentences long, where you graciously accepted praise for being compared to Berkshire Hathaway -- arguably one of the big corporate success stories of our generation. Are you willing to share the details of your subsequent good-faith conversation....?
I voted for pinboard... and I'm curious why Kevin decided that it wasn't in the spirit of the program.
I have no bone in this fight, since I did not apply nor would we apply for YCF (I think it's a great idea, but my company doesn't fit the criteria). And, if it matters, I do not use Pinboard and have never spoken a word to 'idlewords.
I respect 'dang and 'kevin both, a ton. Have always had nothing but pleasant interactions with them, and the amount of care they put towards managing this community is seemingly boundless.
With all of that said, 'idlewords is absolutely right here. The HN mods and/or YCF made a choice here not to fund Pinboard, regardless of whether HN wanted to or not. It's not really OK to say that it's an experiment where HN gets to make choices and then not support them, unless there were explicitly some bad blood or trolling occurring. Based on everything 'idlewords has posted, it would appear that he is not trolling. Sure, perhaps he has a bit of a 'let's watch the world burn' attitude, but it's not entirely clear to the rest of us that that isn't just a persona.
If I had applied for the "Apply HN" experiment, there is no way in hell I wouldn't have tweeted or asked customers to upvote - of course you would! Sure, perhaps this doesn't reflect the true nature of HN's vote, since these may or may not be regular HN users, but unless you only count users that have some age or karma, you can't prevent that. Alternatively, you can make it a stated rule that this isn't a popularity contest and thus you should not ask for votes elsewhere. That was not made clear at all - it was implied, or at least I perceived, that this was intended to be 'an experiment in democracy,' for better or worse.
I do think, if 'idlewords is truly interested in the fellowship and all of the requirements therein (Skype meetings or whatever else), that it would be good to stand by the original rules. With that said, these are investment decisions and aren't intended to be taken lightly, and obviously you guys have the final decision anyway (this was always true, no matter what HN said - you're the ones putting up the money and time).
I just think it's more 'right' if you follow along with the original plan of the experiment. Hell, maybe 'idlewords ends up getting so much value out of YCF that he becomes even more serious about Pinboard and it's the next Pinterest (no pun intended). If nothing else, YC/HN may learn something from it.
Have you not got more than $20,000 out of all the publicity? It is not better for you to have been “kicked out” than actually selected?
Regarding Pinboard, the simple answer is he won the votes, he won the poll, but he made me feel uncomfortable in the end. I went into my good-faith phone call with him very much wanting this to work out and I was disappointed to come out of it tense and with less energy than when I went in. It’s touchy feely, I know, but the truth.
The thing with YC is startups can’t do the program in a vacuum. Even with the remote nature of the Fellowship, the founders affect the partners they work with and the other founders they work alongside, both in their batch and among the alumni community. We made the decision to call all the startups we’d consider taking on through Apply HN and make a decision on fit. I know that’s changing the rules at the last second, but we didn’t realize this until Pinboard entered the fray. I'm actually grateful for the head's up. Like all our experiments at YC, we design them to adapt as things happen, and they certainly did here.
I made the same phone calls with the other founders and they felt completely different. I wasn’t looking for gratitude or devotion or deference. My minimum was connection, my ideal was simpatico—evidence that I could spend a lot of time with the founder, which is what’s needed to make this relationship work well. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a good rapport with Maciej. Regardless of the vote situation, I’d make the same decision.
Maciej is clearly brilliant and quite witty and knows how to build and direct a passionate following. Pinboard is unique and I’m glad it exists. More opinionated software should exist in the world. Even though we couldn’t find rapport together, I sincerely wish him and his startup the very best.
I'm sorry you didn't feel full of energy after our (very unexpected) phone call. Building rapport with you was not one of the evaluation criteria.
We're grown-ups and don't have to like each other to work together effectively.
However, I appreciate your being honest about arbitrarily changing the rules on me.
> We're grown-ups and don't have to like each other to work together effectively.
This times 1000. A working relationship is not a friendship nor does it require any particularly strong "rapport". Though the idea that there's no difference between a working relationship and being best buds is, I guess, not uncommon in SV---something to protest against the next time an experiment like this is run, I guess.
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"He made me feel uncomfortable" is like slide 3 of every "unconscious bias" training workshop ever. As we slowly try to claw our way out from a deservedly terrible reputation in our industry, high-profile retentions for, basically, "lack of culture fit" send a dark message to every person in existence who fears they might not leave you "energized".
I realize it's inadvisable to wade into this discussion, but this just leaves me indignant and disappointed on behalf of my whole industry and profession.
This is the Achilles's Heal of YC's application process. The human "culture fit" test, where in (literally) just a few minutes they evaluate the founders as people.
The reason this experiment was so interesting was that it would bypass their biased human filtering and let in people based purely on their merit.
Not accepting Pinboard undermines the entire experiment. Pinboard could likely be a huge company with YC's help, and it would be fucking hilarious to watch.
Let Pinboard in and do the experiment again. He's smart and he's not crazy. Any founder able to win the votes is someone you can work with. Consider it a diversity program, which it would be.
It also flies in the face of the "meritocracy" narrative that's so often brought up when talking about tech culture.
> he made me feel uncomfortable in the end
This kind of statement is broad, and covers anything from "he said he'd use the money to breed a race of robotic nazi grizzly bears" to "his voice reminded me of my ex-spouse's".
YC is y'all's thing, you run it however you want, but the lack of details here does make it seem like it really is about the fact that Maciej routinely criticizes the whole VC/startup fairy tale that YC peddles, and that changing the rules at the last minute is the only way you came up with to dodge having to work with him.
I generally agree with what Maciej has to say, and have a fairly negative opinion of YC (despite enjoying the HN community, and respecting some of the people involved with YC) - I thought I'd be pleasantly surprised by YC here and see what happens when they're willing to work with one of their smarter critics.
But in the end, there's just disappointment, and no reason to reconsider my perception of YC.
Could you guys maybe amend the post you just wrote, and Dan's disclaimer about Pinboard?
"We changed the rules at the last minute. We're sorry, but that's the way it goes."
I can live with that. What you did instead, first by pretending Maciej didn't win in your post, and then by blaming him for not being selected in Dan's follow-up, was a mistake, and not a great way to treat him. I don't know you at all, but Dan likes you so you can't be a bad person, and I can't believe Dan is happy with this.
This is exactly what strikes me as odd about the whole thing. 'dang has made an impressive effort to keep everything on HN as transparent as possible, and this explanation just screamed inconsistency.
Were the real reason, as stated here, published the first time, I wouldn't even have bothered to comment.
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I was an applicant and I understood from the start that the votes would influence it but that YCF would make the final call. It was clear to me before I applied that YCF would have a final say. I'm sorry it's confusing you.
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>We made the decision to call all the startups we’d consider taking on through Apply HN and make a decision on fit. […] Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a good rapport with Maciej. Regardless of the vote situation, I’d make the same decision.
1. As other posters have said, "we couldn't find rapport" is a warning sign of unconscious bias. And, as you said, the rules were constructed "on purpose: we don't want to bias it along the lines of how YC already operates."
2. It's pretty clear that "we decided to privately call all the startups rather than do everything in public" only happened because of Pinboard's success.
3. You guys dropped the ball on this one, big time. DQ-ing Pinboard isn't the real problem. If you think the Pinboard business is no good, or the founder would squander the money, whatever, that's your call. But it should have happened far earlier in the process. Waiting to drop Pinboard until after after two rounds of votes were tabulated is ridiculous.
>My minimum was connection
>Maciej is clearly brilliant and quite witty and knows how to build and direct a passionate following. Pinboard is unique and I’m glad it exists. More opinionated software should exist in the world. Even though we couldn’t find rapport together, I sincerely wish him and his startup the very best.
I find this a little confusing in that it seems to conflict with what I had taken as the entire purpose of the experiment. If not trying out people who have positive attributes who others seem to like that you don't connect with then honestly, what's the point of this?
Everything HN readers know about choosing successful founders comes from reading material written by you guys and seeing your results in action. The facts were never going to be radically different in that our primary criteria would be things like "company name has lots of strong letters" or "that guy has a power beard", no the things discussed in the comments were stuff we've read from VCs and are effectively regurgitating. Nothing revolutionary there.
The true value I thought you were going for was to take the bias of "do I connect with this guy" out of it. But instead you say you think he's great, companies great, but just don't connect with him. You don't need us to be able to find great people with great ideas that you do connect with.
You've taken a system that would remove your own intuition bias, and then created a step at the last minute where the only apparent intent appears to be to introduce that bias. :/
I sort of hope this is just a polite "this isn't a business decision. It would just suck to work with this guy and I'm successful enough to not have to do things that suck for money", in which case fair enough.
I am not sure feeling uncomfortable around someone or not having a connection with them is a reasonable excuse for a company that wants to encourage diversity and reaching out to disadvantaged groups. Racial bias in workplaces is largely the result of people hiring those who are most like themselves. I think if your goal is to really to be inclusive, you should take people on their merits and abilities, not on the minutia of how you personally feel about them.
Disclaimer: I didn't vote for Pinboard and hadn't even heard of them before this voting.
Very much agreed. Allowing vague, largely unexamined "gut feels" to drive decision making is antithetical to what we want tech culture to be, and also precludes objectivity. It is by a very wide margin the most common tool used to restrict diversity - in all its forms - and keep something a closed club by making its decisions vague, nonspecific, and by its nature unchallengeable either from within or without.
Gut feels are often valuable signals, but without further examination and specificity they are a gigantic bias bomb waiting to explode.
An organization that widely permits this type of vague assertion to pass unchallenged is institutionally incapable of improving inclusivity or diversity, and one has to wonder if it's institutionally interested in the same at all.
Some concrete questions: what is YC's policy on ensuring employees/partners have received training re: bias? Have YC decision makers all participated in de-biasing education? If not, how does this reflect on YC's apparent dedication to improving diversity in our field?
Wouldn't it have been a great experiment to see if a company Kevin didn't like did well in the batch?
If the point was to experiment I think YC missed out on a big opportunity.
Yeah I have to admit that this puzzled me as well. I think Kevin and the rest of the YC folks have every right to do whatever they please with this process, and am not bothered in the least by the fact that Pinboard wasn't chosen, but reading Kevin's explanation somehow made me think that some of those WOULD be reasons to select it.
Pinboard is in a relatively unique situation amongst all the other companies in that it is beyond finding product-market fit -- it's got an established userbase and a founder with proven chops and a large following. It seems like he is in the exact position where something like YCF can help pour gasoline on the things that he's doing that are already working.
I understand YC's tremendous focus on finding a right fit with founders when they join the regular batches. But, at least at first, it's not entirely clear that this criterion should hold as much weight with YCF. They'll talk less frequently, invest less money, etc. -- maybe the optimal strategy for YCF is in fact focusing much more on the present stage of the company and whether or not the little bit of cash/partner influence can cause an inflection??? Who knows, really... but it sure sounded like accepting Pinboard -- not in spite but because there were these issues with Maciej -- would make it an especially interesting case to try out.
The right thing to do here would have been to award the fellowship to the voting winners and then amend your rules to exclude "applicants about whom we have bad vibes" going forward.
Retroactively doing so, sure, is your right but it's fairly underhanded.
Now, I'm just waiting the next hilarous talk Maciej will give about this YC case.
"I don't like him so we didn't pick him"
Let's be honest here, this is all because of Maciej's hilarious twitter account...
"Pay the man his money"
Is what I would say.
Especially considering the amount we're talking about is peanuts, by VC (and YC) standards. Some startups pay more for a chair.
> More opinionated software should exist in the world...
"...but we aren't going to be the ones to help that happen."
The 'ol Bay area bait-n-switch. Honor isn't something you 'prototype and revise'.
>> "Like all our experiments at YC, we design them to adapt as things happen, and they certainly did here."
Hi Kevin... :-)
Understand your feelings and agree with the choice in the context of YC/YCF - but to me this is a massive opportunity to grow YC beyond what it is now; to me, it feels that instead of looking for a way make it work, YC bailed out.
To that end, on a trial basis, I'm offering to start YCX, which would allow YC and the community to work together to make this possible.
While I wouldn't pretend to know the all the answers now (or in the future) - I deeply believe in bridging the gaps between communities to form new communities that in the end will be in sum stronger, more diverse, create opportunities, etc.
Very possible that I've misunderstood, but the main issues I'm seeing are: (1) how YCX relationships would work with YC/YCF and (2) insuring that the way capital is provided works for YC, the startups, and community.
To that end, to me, some solutions might be to have the funds provided by the community via non-equity crowdfunding, have YCX only mentors, allow YC/YCF to opt-in to relationships with YCX fellows, etc.
Happy to talk more offline if you're open to trying to make this work; also, completely understand if it's not a path YC wants to consider too.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I voted for Pinboard and only Pinboard because I wanted to maximize the impact of my vote for Pinboard.
If that's what you mean when you say 'the votes for Pinboard look dramatically different from the votes for the other startups', then I think you've unfairly confused my deliberate intentions with 'vote brigading'.
Things turned out exactly how I expected they would here, but it's still disappointing.
I'm in the same situation; I lurk HN daily, and voted for Pinboard only.
I hope single-votes are not being called out as part of some 'vote brigading' conspiracy :\
Throw me in this pool. I lurk frequently, rarely comment or contribute.
But I made a single vote, explicitly for Pinboard, and had not seen his tweets. I probably look like a voting scheme. But it was a legitimate and intentional vote because I believe in Maciej and what he could do to grow his business and improve YC through the fellowship.
> Things turned out exactly how I expected they would here, but it's still disappointing.
Yeah, this is disappointing, but also completely predictable.
same voting pattern for me as well, 1 vote for pinboard
I voted for Maciej because I admire what he's doing and I'd like to think that I "get" him (though I don't know him personally). I cut my teeth in this industry working at a startup that's still bootstrapped and profitable, and I share his vision of building an internet to "CONNECT KNOWLEDGE, PEOPLE, AND CATS" [1], instead of whatever insane internet people are dreaming of these days. Yes, it's a bit of a political thing, and while it might be a protest against the current industry culture (can you honestly blame us?), I don't think it's just a joke either. I think Maciej has a great intuitive sense of how people, technology, and culture interact, and he's good at expressing that; his ventures are certainly worth spending the equivalent of a single employee's recruitment fee.
Is the true YC? For all the talk about funding radical new ideas in their normal batches, they fund a lot of companies that look and act alike. So, when YC backs out of its own experiment because it turns out unexpected, it's not really disappointing; it's just a reminder of how seemingly conformist its attitudes are.
[1] http://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm
To make this right just make an additional YCF spot for Maciej, call it the "People's Choice" award, and be done with it. You can't hold a popularity contest and deny the popular candidate. Curate from the rest, sure, but people are always going to feel ripped off if the popular winner gets arbitrarily disqualified. That's why 'people's choice' awards exist. Plus if this is an experiment, why not run with the unexpected?
This is chock full of platitudes and obfuscation. Pinboard appears to have participated in good faith, as you admitted yourself. It seems rather like HN/YC had never intended to allow Pinboard to win, even before any votes had been cast.
If your aim with this contest was to pilot something new and unique that might further distinguish YC, I suppose you've done just that, even if in the opposite direction. Sometimes karma is more than just a column in your database.
(Disclaimer: I did not vote.)
I understand the concerns you all have, but I thought the experiment was to see what would happen with some startups selected by HN. By disqualifying one of the submissions based on an interview, you're testing something slightly different.
If you're 'sad' and 'really wanted it to work,' well, why isn't it happening? Do you have the power to make it happen? The voters apparently didn't.
There are two sides to an investor/mentoring/incubating relationship.
> I presume this is the effect of Pinboard's (deservedly) large audience being asked to promote the post, e.g. at https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/727255170594131968 and https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/719599297604390912.
Rather than presuming, you could check your logs and subtract the votes from users who arrived at the thread via one of these referring URLs. What do the vote totals look like if you do that?
I voted for Pinboard during "Apply HN", then went about my business. I don't refresh the HN homepage every 5 minutes (well, not every day...) so there was a big chance I would miss the second poll if it hadn't been for the Pinboard twitter feed. In fact, at this point there is a nagging suspicion that someone hoped less people would notice the second poll and results could "normalise"... The "voting ring" smear is just clutching at straws, really.
at this point there is a nagging suspicion that someone hoped less people would notice the second poll and results could "normalise"
I exchanged a few emails with Dan, and based on those I can say that this is definitely not what happened. Rather to the contrary, he was concerned that having a poll among "leading candidates" would make it too easy to game.
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> But then two things happened. First, Kevin and Maciej had the good-faith conversation described at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11441978, and Kevin reluctantly concluded that Maciej doesn’t want to participate in the program as intended
How in the world do you come to that conclusion from THIS:
> Kevin: If you were seriously interested, I'd be delighted to work with you.
> Maciej: I feel like after seven years, I have a pretty good sense of what bookmarking/archiving needs people have, but am at the limits of what I can personally build. If the votes swing my way, I'd be happy to have a good-faith conversation with you.
And then how do you reconcile this statement from above:
> Kevin was excited by the prospect of working with [pinboard].
with this from below?
> tptacek: You weren't turning the knobs to see what would change. The outcome was clear, you didn't like it, and so you prevented it from happening.
> Kevin: Yes. I wasn't arguing against that.
if you wanted to work with Maceij, and he said he'd be happy to have a good faith conversation with you if he won, then why would you a) not like the outcome or b) prevent it from happening?
I don't really care who won, but these claims have no internal consistency and literally don't make any sense.
If you removed votes from all accounts newer than the day you announced this entire program, what would the tally be? If I had to guess it would have still won.
Lol vote brigading. You mean... people showing up and voting for what they want?
No, I mean soliciting upvotes, which is against the rules (and culture) of HN. We discussed this elsewhere in this thread.
FWIW, I don't have any dog in this race; I'm just a HN reader who liked Pinboard and voted for it.
Is it possible to address the points raised by `beeboop' and `killwhitey' above with the data available -- would long-term HN members have been enough to put Pinboard over the top ? (i.e. the vote brigading had no substantive effect and it was just the phone conversation that prompted the decision)
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To do or not to do the following is of course entirely your / YCF's prerogative, but: would you perhaps consider providing a more quantitative answer to 'toyg's query below - in particular: "Even easier: how many up votes did the original "Apply HN" for Pinboard get before he sent out his first tweet about it?"
Surely this is not hard to check? I think many people are justifiably curious, given that "vote brigading" is in my mind an accusation. (I understand that the decision has already been made and that it will not be changed.)
>when we dug into the data we found that the votes for Pinboard look dramatically different from the votes for the other startups.
What do the totals look like if you filter out new accounts, or accounts with little karma?
"but when we dug into the data we found that the votes for Pinboard look dramatically different from the votes for the other startups."
Examining the data, we found that there were oddly more votes cast for Pinboard than the other contestants, which smelled fishy so they were disqualified. Seriously, don't ask for people to vote for things and then ignore the results. Just don't ask them to vote in the first place.
Thanks for the transparency as always, Dan. It's well appreciated.
>transparency
I hope this is sarcasm.
This "vote brigading" thing is ridiculous. Are we to believe that no one else involved tweeted or otherwise publicized their candidacy?
Let's be clear; this wasn't just somebody tweeting about their Apply HN. It was explicit and repeated requests to vote specifically for him, going to a couple of orders of magnitude more followers than a normal person would have. What would be ridiculous is for the results to be determined by who has the biggest social networking presence.
> It was explicit and repeated requests to vote specifically for him
Where, exactly? His Twitter feed contains a single link to each of his original Apply HN and the later poll (plus one link-less joke about the poll). I mean, yes, he has a big following, and yes, he promoted his application (which everyone involved admits he would not have done if he had thought it was against the rules). But "explicit and repeated" makes it sound like a lot more than one (humorous) tweet per poll.
And it's not like he used a personal account, either. That one doesn't mention it at all. It's just @Pinboard - and frankly, it would be weird if you didn't think current customers would want to support you in growing your business.
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Dude, any election is a social thing. To pretend otherwise is to kid yourself. If you don't want a popularity contest across social networks, don't have public voting - simple as.
If they did so publicly, you can tell dang about it...
That's not really relevant; I don't think it's our job, or anyone else's, to police the internet for 'vote brigading.' In this case, it was never against the stated rules.
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No transparency here. How disappointing.
Yeah, I made a good call bailing on this place.