[chrischen]

The OP was joking about the plot twist but as it turns out we actually did the plot twist! We released one of the first free to try deep-learning powered photo to painting service shortly after the paper was published in 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10162121. The initial version was a general one that took 1 day to train each image uploaded, and worked on arbitrary images.

That being said I think your belief somehow these comments shouldn't be used to promote competitors—at the expense of hiding potentially relevant comments from the community—is misguided. Ultimately HN, and even Show HN, are here to serve the interests of the community first—not the poster. I personally always appreciate when reading "launch HN" when someone summarizes the competitive landscape because this information helps me, the community member, and so that HN doesn't simply become a PR channel for every startup. It would make sense if this were an actual advertisement (say, on Facebook) that you'd get rid of comments mentioning competitors, but this isn't an ad platform, and I think mentioning competitors contributes to the discussion around what is being launched. Comments and discussion should benefit the community first, and not the poster of the story.

[frequentnapper]

You have misunderstood. I don't have a problem with regards to you saying something like, "I represent Instapainting, which is a competitor and we used CNNs..."

Your response to this particular thread made it seem like you were somehow connected to the OP and if one didn't read the link properly and distinguish it, might just seem like the OP is linking to their product's version of CNN powered paintings.

[asavadatti]

I hear you and I agree with you. HN shouldn't be a PR channel for your startup and the community benefits from talking about the competitive landscape. Your other comments about your margins and business model were quite insightful to me.

However having said that, it does feel like you are hijacking this thread. You have linked to your own website multiple times, advertised your own competing Indian artist services, and you are even answering questions that were posed to the OP. That, in my opinion, is a step too far. Your thoughts on "Community First" come across as a tad hypocritical as you seem to be doing plenty of PR for your own service. This may have not been your intention but that is what it is coming across as.

[chrischen]

> You have linked to your own website multiple times, advertised your own competing Indian artist services, and you are even answering questions that were posed to the OP

Yes I did answer a question technically posed to Koonchi, though they also directly mentioned Instapainting in the comment. In other areas I replied when Instapainting was mentioned and/or to clarify some outdated facts such as that there are also Indian artists on our platform that compete with Koonchi (someone implied we only had Chinese artists).

I'm not saying that HN shouldn't be used for PR, or promoting your own business (in fact it should be and is what show HN is for), but this channel isn't a PR channel exclusively for a single startup.

As for this direct thread, it doesn't seem like Koonchi provides deep-learning powered photo to painting services, which is something we do provide and why I felt it was relevant to the discussion of the commenter.

I can see why it looks like hijacking, especially the wording of some of the other commenters (who are unaffiliated with me or Instapainting) that commented and inserted "ads" for Instapainting well before I even woke up in the day. But I tried to only add to what was already there, because I'm also running a business after all.

As you may have noted already I've posted about Instapainting on HN many times before as well, and have always gotten other competitors mentioning their businesses in the comments, and I have never nor would ever question them on why they are "advertising" their businesses on my thread—because it's not actually "my" thread. I hope that offers a perspective window into why I responded or joined the discussion. I've been doing this for about 5 years now and also part of the HN community since pre-2011. It would just feel a bit odd for me to stay silent when a near identical business launches and for me to not offer any feedback.