Comment by tomhow
6 months ago
> Playing with daddy's money
Personal attacks like this are not ok.
Sure, criticize their actions, but don't parlay that into this kind of personal swipe at the individuals and their families; that's when the line is crossed from valid critique of actions to nasty mob pile-on, and that's never ok here.
Not that it should matter but as far as I can tell, the Pickle founder/CEO grew up and studied in Korea, and we have no idea what their family circumstances were.
This guy did something very immoral and callous, and will seemingly face no real consequences for it. Roasting him in the comments of the site of the people paying him is somehow overkill?
None of us knows exactly what this specific person did or what their motivation, intention or understanding of the situation was. We only know what was in the company’s code that was published, and we know what they’ve done since to try and address it.
“Roasting” is one word for something that can be described in far more serious terms. It’s against the HN guidelines and the guidelines still have to be upheld to some degree.
It’s also false that they will face no real consequences. They’ll never forget this experience and these sorts of things are often terminal for a company.
Now you are the one making reaching speculation. As far as we know, these people are conspiring to do the exact same thing because the present damages has been $0 in fines/legal fees and a reasonably successful seed round. In terms of game theory, there is zero reason to give them benefit of the doubt until they are sat in a court hearing for the infraction. They ventured nothing and gained everything.
If you want to convince people to steer away from ad-hominem, don't get all touchy-feely from the thought of a business breaking the law.
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I think you are so comprehensively wrong that there’s not enough commonality between our worldviews for me to even try to convince you
>They’ll never forget this experience
Right. They'll learn to be more discreet about it next time. Do you really believe "I got flamed on the Internet" is a memory that will counterbalance "I can make millions out of selling stolen code if I don't get caught" ? (especially considering that you flag such comments, therefore their shielding their poor egos from seeing mean words.)
>these sorts of things are often terminal for a company.
Starting a company is not hard. Thousands are created, and destroyed each day. If they're smart, under someone else's name. Maybe, maybe one person will see <generic AI company name> and think to look at the CEO, remember what he did and potentially try to warn people about it, and they'll be promptly ignored. Helped by people like you, under the guise of muh guidelines
>“Roasting” is one word for something that can be described in far more serious terms
I'd love to hear those terms. Because the worst that comes to mind that could apply is "disparaging", and unfortunately for them, "being mean on the internet" isn't something they can or will sue over.
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Sometimes it's really surprising what comments you guys push back on and which ones you don't comment on. (Yes, I know, you can't see everything, etc.). I suspect it might be because this one wasn't dressed up enough.
While it is a personal attack, it is pretty tame compared to (non-flagged) comments I see here every day. I especially don't see it as a swipe at their family. Yet this is a pretty strong rebuke.
While I highly doubt it's because the subject is a YC pick, the optics aren't great.
FWIW, that comment looked like an egregious personal attack to me too (and yes I hear you that you're not defending that post! but rather asking a fair question about moderation standards).
If there are comments that are that bad or worse floating around HN, which aren't getting flagged and/or replied to by moderators, we really need to see them. If you can recall where any of them are, and can dig up links, we'd appreciate it. Failing that, if you (or anyone) see cases of this in the future, we'd appreciate a heads-up.
The one thing I can imagine you might be referring to are some of the recent politically charged threads where people were really going after each other. Those are hard to moderate without coming across as taking one political side against another (which we're careful not to, but this is easy to miss when passions are high). But even in those cases we do our best to make sure that the guideline-violating comments get flagged.
I realize you already alluded to this when you say "Yes, I know, you can't see everything," but that really is the only reason why comments of this sort should be going unflagged or unmoderated on HN. There's a lot that we just don't see here—there's far too much for us to read it all, and we rely on users bringing it to our attention.
I wasn’t surprised by the pushback. This isn’t like responding to a pseudonymous HN comment opting into a discussion, they are talking about specific people and posting pointedly mean-spirited remarks towards a party that has not opted to discuss their provenance.
The response could’ve been better worded but you can see how no one would want to moderate a community that makes it a habit to disparage specific people outside of a good faith discussion.
>I wasn’t surprised by the pushback.
This comment broke the guidelines. I'm not saying it shouldn't have been moderated. I made a meta comment on the overall moderation on HN, which sometimes surprises me in which comments get reprimanded and which ones don't (and with what amount of vigor the reprimand is delivered with).
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There’s something about the point when anger at someone’s actions turns to trawling over someone’s backstory in order to attack/demean them as a person that crosses a line for me; I’ve always pushed back on it whenever I’ve seen it, on HN and elsewhere. People doing it and supporting it always think it’s “not that bad”; nobody likes to think of themselves as doing or supporting something bad.
Any time you see egregious comments on HN that aren’t flagged/dead, you should flag them and email us so we can take a look.
>People doing it and supporting it always think it’s “not that bad”; nobody likes to think of themselves as doing “bad”.
So we're clear, because this implies I'm "supporting" it, I'm not. Just saying that this is more tame than many personal attacks I've seen, with a stronger response than I've seen (when there is a response). And, in this case, that gives off some bad optics/more ammo to people who are critical about when & why you moderate.
Without moderator transparency (which I've read the reasoning for, and can agree with!), optics is really all you've got.
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>someone’s actions turns to trawling over someone’s backstory
"using daddy's money" when talking about a VC funded founder is such a safe bet that if Berkshire Hathaway could invest in it, they would.
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[flagged]
It’s obviously diminutive and patronizing, and makes implications or assumptions about them and their families that are based on stereotypes or sparse information. It’s clearly against the guidelines and the guidelines aren’t discarded altogether just because a YC company is involved.
damn right it's diminutive, and why the hell not? these clowns and the idiots who fund their tomfoolery deserve it
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