[gustavo-fring]

How exactly would we deal with this issue then? I'm sure you've seen where people have accused you of editing Austin Allred's username on his account. Nobody else can do that.If I believe that lambda school or coinbase has been involved in shady business practices, is HN not the place to discuss that? Do you not have a conflict of interest here?

[dang]

(Although your account is rate-limited because of the quantity of flamewar comments you've posted, I've temporarily turned the rate limit off so you can reply. You don't need to create new accounts, which HN's anti-troll software is rejecting anyhow.)

You posted surprisingly vicious smears in this thread, even blaming one person for the death of another. Some of that you edited in an extremely misleading way, so that the community's original response seemed unreasonable, when in fact it had been appropriate. Even in the above comment, which is still up, you've accused someone of being fake, fraudulent, and dishonest, with zero basis. When asked not to do any of this, you haven't even acknowledged what you did—instead you're changing the subject dramatically. Isn't that a little distasteful?

> I'm sure you've seen where people have accused you

Since you saw the thread where people were bringing it up, I'm surprised you didn't see the explanations:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26959559

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26959675

> is HN not the place to discuss that

People discuss companies, including YC-funded companies, at great length on HN all the time. That's not the issue here. The issue is that you've been breaking the site guidelines very badly, and we need you to stop.

> Do you not have a conflict of interest

I've written extensively about that over the years. If you or anyone is interested, some of those past explanations can be found at the following links:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

The short version is that we don't moderate HN to suppress criticism of YC or YC startups, because that would be (a) wrong, (b) futile, and (c) dumb. We moderate HN to try to keep it interesting and in line with the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) — that's all. I'd never claim to be immune from bias (who could?) but I can tell you what principles we try to apply and can at least claim to have years' worth of practice at them.

There's nothing secret here, by the way, in the sense that anyone can get an answer to any question about how HN works (other than technical details about anti-abuse software, and that only because they would stop working if they weren't secret). Trying to run an online community any other way would be inefficient and self-defeating. We try to never do anything that isn't defensible to the community, because the community's good will is the only asset HN has.

I completely understand how easy it is for unexplained details to compound into weird and sinister pictures. That's a fact of human life that we all have to deal with, especially online. But really the cleanest and freshest way to deal with it is to check what's actually happening, when that option is available. HN, even though it has millions of users, is still small enough that that option is actually available. Why not take advantage of that?

[themdangrules]

My "smears" involved talking about how Reddit didn't ban the watchpeopledie and greatawakening subreddits until they became a public issue. People were making death threats in the latter, talking about secret messages from Trump. It's preying on mentally ill people. It's wrong.I said that Graham's influence encouraged Swartz to take the actions he did. To believe that the world was his oyster that he could hack without consequence, and that now the conspiracy subreddit thinks that Swartz is some kind of martyr for freedom.I promise you nothing I said is factually incorrect. You consider them smears because they "smear" the people that pay your salary. You do get paid for this, I hope?I accuse Graham of being dishonest because he won't actually directly discuss issues he has, instead he does it this roundabout way of posting essays, essays which you review and you have banning and moderation power over. You don't see the conflict of interest? It's punching you in the face. I consider Musk a liar, because well, he's a liar. I know Sam has interviewed him before.I did edit my post, but that's because I knew it wouldn't fly. You accused me editing it to be neutral of being "abusive". But I was editing it so it would not ideally cause trouble. But it did anyway because damned if you do, damned if you don't. Now you're trying to portray my edits as abusive. Come on, dude.You've never stood up for me, dang, when people are being pedantic and bullying. What do you want me to admit to? That I have a really strong dislike of you and Graham because here you are being manipulative for all to see? Yeah, I did. That you aren't honest with yourself about the "essays" that Graham attacks people in? Yeah, I feel that. That your moderation is arbitrary and selective and doesn't scale? Yeah. I'll admit, I'd never heard of that essay is French excuse, but it's a good one. I'll have to teach it to my kids (re: Uncle dang).This is a new account, not to be "abusive", because I logged out and don't have the password to the old one. I'm not so offended to call your accusations "smears", but please be aware this is a two way street.I wonder if you would have banned Musk when he called an innocent person a pedophile? Hell of a smear.

[dang]

This account is getting caught in HN's anti-abuse software (correctly), but I've let the comment through because I don't want to prevent you from replying. (You may need to edit it to fix the whitespace - sorry, that's our bug.)

I don't want to keep doing this, though, so would you please use your main account? I removed the restriction from it, so it should work.

A few responses: if you say you didn't intend to mislead by editing your comment, I believe you; nothing factual that you've said about pg remotely justifies the abusive language you used; Elon Musk has nothing to do with any of this; if someone was bullying toward you on HN, or you felt they were, that sucks, and I'm sorry we didn't stand up for you. I try to stand up for someone who's being unfairly criticized when I know about it—don't forget that we don't see the overwhelming majority of what gets posted; I consider it a smear when people say awful things about others without justification; it doesn't depend on payment.