I tried to make the title fit the guidelines and the character limit, then changed it when the community explained why it was important for A16Z to be in the title.
Why do people think we're motivated to “suppress” negative stories about A16Z? They've been criticized forever here and we've never had a problem with it. All we care about is whether a topic makes for an interesting discussion on HN.
And I believe that the mods thinking that a16z was the least critical part of the headline such that it could be cut for space reasons is a huge concern. I'm glad that you changed your mind. But the fact that it was needed worries me and the fact that you can't understand why people were upset is worse.
There doesn't need to be an explicit effort to protect vc firms for your blind spots to shape conversation on this website away from criticizing them.
This argument amounts to an assertion that an editorial judgement about a title that differs from what you consider is most important is axiomatically evidence that we either (a) consciously make decisions to benefit VCs, or (b) unconsciously make decisions that benefit VCs. It allows no room for any other explanations, such as (c) that these actions are of no consequence to VCs, and (d) that we are just focused on our job, which is to uphold the guidelines, keep discussions curious, and avoid repetitive flamewars.
It's noticeable in this subthread that the accusations rely so much on sweeping, unfalsifiable claims and presumptions about our incentives or blind spots, and Kafkaesque logic that allows no space for simple, benign explanations.
Meanwhile, nobody seems to have examined the core assumption; that a title on an HN discussion thread has any consequence or concern for a firm like A16Z. Can anyone explain, specifically, how title changes like this on HN would benefit an outside VC firm?
To answer your literal question of "why do people think..."
For a while there was a widespread standing principle to not assume malice for actions that could be explained as a simple mistake. If only one person follows this policy, it's great. However, so many people were following this policy that it created massive incentives to disguise profit motivated malice as explainable accidents. We're in the midst of a massive backswing against this.
So, there is very little taste for patience when agents of ycombinator make mistakes that benefit a16z such as accidentally removing them from the title of a negative article, due to the billions of dollars entangling ycombinator with the reputation of a16z. This is not because it wasn't an accident- it's because any culture of patience with this will lead (and has led) to an explosion of copycat whoopsies.
> Why do people think we're motivated to “suppress” negative stories about A16Z?
I think a more charitable interpretation of this kind of argument is that the money and power that entities like A16Z have make the possibility of corruption of endeavours like HN trivial.
In light of the ease in which a wealthy entity like A16Z can exert influence over an entity like HN and the track records of various A16Z adjacent/similar people doing similar things to other HN-like entities it's very natural that people are concerned about the possibility of similar things happening here.
Like it or not as an editor at HN you're in a position of power and influence and others with far greater power would certainly leverage what you have here if suited their interests.
Avoiding even the appearance of impropriety is no easy task especially in this medium and I don't envy you in taking it on, but it's an essential part of something like HN. If the users in aggregate don't trust the moderation process or the administrators then this all sort of falls apart and the interesting discussion suffers.
> money and power that entities like A16Z have make the possibility of corruption of endeavours like HN trivial
What does this mean? Why would a VC firm like this "corrupt" HN and how would they do it? And why would we allow them to do it? What would be the motivation of us moderators to allow it?
This is false. Nothing was done to your account at that time, whereas rate-limiting was active on your account at least two weeks ago. Rate limiting is applied to accounts that do things like use HN for political/ideological battle, or post too many low-quality comments, both of which you've been doing. Here are some of the worst of the comments you've been posting in recent months.
The A16Z title issue was no great scandal. It was bog standard moderation, with attention and responsiveness to community sentiment and feedback. That kind of thing happens all the time.
Meanwhile, you post too many comments that break the guidelines and use HN against its intended purpose. HN is only a place people want participate because others make an effort to keep the standards up rather than dragging them down. Please do your part to make HN better not worse if you want to participate here.
I tried to make the title fit the guidelines and the character limit, then changed it when the community explained why it was important for A16Z to be in the title.
Why do people think we're motivated to “suppress” negative stories about A16Z? They've been criticized forever here and we've never had a problem with it. All we care about is whether a topic makes for an interesting discussion on HN.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
And I believe that the mods thinking that a16z was the least critical part of the headline such that it could be cut for space reasons is a huge concern. I'm glad that you changed your mind. But the fact that it was needed worries me and the fact that you can't understand why people were upset is worse.
There doesn't need to be an explicit effort to protect vc firms for your blind spots to shape conversation on this website away from criticizing them.
This argument amounts to an assertion that an editorial judgement about a title that differs from what you consider is most important is axiomatically evidence that we either (a) consciously make decisions to benefit VCs, or (b) unconsciously make decisions that benefit VCs. It allows no room for any other explanations, such as (c) that these actions are of no consequence to VCs, and (d) that we are just focused on our job, which is to uphold the guidelines, keep discussions curious, and avoid repetitive flamewars.
It's noticeable in this subthread that the accusations rely so much on sweeping, unfalsifiable claims and presumptions about our incentives or blind spots, and Kafkaesque logic that allows no space for simple, benign explanations.
Meanwhile, nobody seems to have examined the core assumption; that a title on an HN discussion thread has any consequence or concern for a firm like A16Z. Can anyone explain, specifically, how title changes like this on HN would benefit an outside VC firm?
To answer your literal question of "why do people think..."
For a while there was a widespread standing principle to not assume malice for actions that could be explained as a simple mistake. If only one person follows this policy, it's great. However, so many people were following this policy that it created massive incentives to disguise profit motivated malice as explainable accidents. We're in the midst of a massive backswing against this.
So, there is very little taste for patience when agents of ycombinator make mistakes that benefit a16z such as accidentally removing them from the title of a negative article, due to the billions of dollars entangling ycombinator with the reputation of a16z. This is not because it wasn't an accident- it's because any culture of patience with this will lead (and has led) to an explosion of copycat whoopsies.
> make mistakes that benefit a16z
Specifically, how does that title change make any difference to A16Z?
> Why do people think we're motivated to “suppress” negative stories about A16Z?
I think a more charitable interpretation of this kind of argument is that the money and power that entities like A16Z have make the possibility of corruption of endeavours like HN trivial.
In light of the ease in which a wealthy entity like A16Z can exert influence over an entity like HN and the track records of various A16Z adjacent/similar people doing similar things to other HN-like entities it's very natural that people are concerned about the possibility of similar things happening here.
Like it or not as an editor at HN you're in a position of power and influence and others with far greater power would certainly leverage what you have here if suited their interests.
Avoiding even the appearance of impropriety is no easy task especially in this medium and I don't envy you in taking it on, but it's an essential part of something like HN. If the users in aggregate don't trust the moderation process or the administrators then this all sort of falls apart and the interesting discussion suffers.
> money and power that entities like A16Z have make the possibility of corruption of endeavours like HN trivial
What does this mean? Why would a VC firm like this "corrupt" HN and how would they do it? And why would we allow them to do it? What would be the motivation of us moderators to allow it?
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[flagged]
This is false. Nothing was done to your account at that time, whereas rate-limiting was active on your account at least two weeks ago. Rate limiting is applied to accounts that do things like use HN for political/ideological battle, or post too many low-quality comments, both of which you've been doing. Here are some of the worst of the comments you've been posting in recent months.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45821460
The A16Z title issue was no great scandal. It was bog standard moderation, with attention and responsiveness to community sentiment and feedback. That kind of thing happens all the time.
Meanwhile, you post too many comments that break the guidelines and use HN against its intended purpose. HN is only a place people want participate because others make an effort to keep the standards up rather than dragging them down. Please do your part to make HN better not worse if you want to participate here.
[flagged]
3 replies →