[pen2l]

> I'm beginning to become annoyed with you for insinuating the same cheap falsehood every time one of these stories comes up.

Every time? That's very much an exaggeration! Secondly, if you read my comment you'll see I did not accuse YC of flagging the story, I was myself thinking it was user flags (though, when one considers that flagging privileges are sometimes revoked... and only "good" users are left to flag, userflag starts to seem very much like a YC-flag - but that's a story for another day). Anyway, I do think I didn't choose my words very carefully, there's arguably some connotation of YC being `directly` involved in flagging in my comment, that was unintended.

[dang]

Many more times than I have energy for.

Your oft-repeated claim/insinuation/smear that we censor anti-YC stories isn't true, nor fair, nor even reasonable, since to run HN that way would be stupid and the whole thing would have fallen apart years ago.

It's also mean—you have no idea how hard we work to make sure that stuff like that doesn't happen.

And in this case it was lazy as well: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=airbnb%20horror%20story&sort=b....

[pen2l]

> since to run HN that way would be stupid and the whole thing would have fallen apart years ago.

That's just not true though. Huge governments have survived through propaganda, brainwashing, etc. (not necessarily accusing YC of doing that, just making a point). Forums can persist in any direction you want if they're carefully and meticulously managed, one can partake in rampant banning, censoring, etc. and it'll all still be fine, it happens everywhere all the time.

[dang]

You're arguing technicalities, but the important points are: (1) we don't censor stories for being negative about YC because doing so would be wrong and bad for the community, and (2), it would be a stupid risk to take with HN if we did. "Whatever you do, don't do that" is literally the first thing pg said to me about how to moderate HN.