It will never happen, but that's not the reason. The reason is that voting data is an extremely intimate reflection of users' feelings and beliefs. None of us would want that picture of ourselves to become public, and I shudder to think of what people would do to each other with the information.
I agree with this. But do you think only showing the first X votes could help resolve it? If you want to keep your upvote private, don't upvote if there are < X votes.
Everyone knows the site is partial to YC companies. It's an open secret. I consider it part of the "trade" in exchange for running a decent board without any ads or surveillance monetization. They're doing this for a reason, and it's to pump their brand.
Hell they could just tag articles related to YC companies with a special color and pin them for a bit. I'd be fine with that.
I'm not sure why you're feeling like this is secret when we make a point of explicitly disclosing it, and always have. In fact, haven't you and I had exchanges about this years ago?
There are three formal things that HN gives back to YC in exchange for funding it: (1) job ads, which appear on the front page and later on https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs; (2) Launch HNs for YC startups, which appear on the front page and later on https://news.ycombinator.com/launches; (3) YC alumni usernames display in orange to other YC alumni (though not to themselves, which has led to a stream of emails over the years).
We explicitly don't do anything beyond that to favor YC or YC companies on HN, though we don't draw lines to exclude anything either, because YC-related people and content are an inseparable part of the community here.