[arp242]

What's wrong with engaging with someone who has concerns how the site is run?

And I have never really seen any indication of excessive "moderation and preference for YC-positive narrative". It should be unsurprising that his personal views are positive towards YC, but I see no problem with that as I have seen many people freely criticize YC, Paul Graham, and dang without being moderated away or kicked off the site (indeed, that is happening right here and now!)

[ycconflict]

Dang didn't engage with my argument at all. He threw up a smoke screen and claimed they're not journalists (they just happen to have called the site Hacker News, but it's not really news I guess?). The parent is correct, dang is not acting as a moderator, but as a pro-YC participant in many threads. That along with the lack of transparency, "launch hn", yc hiring threads with no comments, opaque moderation (no mod log)... are all exactly what you'd expect from a site run by a venture capital firm.

If YC was going to take on the herculean task of trying to prove that their venture capital run message board was somehow not biased, they would need to really lean into transparency. As it is, they've done the exact opposite. I strongly disagree with dang that the general sentiment is that HN is unbiased, maybe amongst the faithful here people will say that (hoping someday to get some YC cash), but in the wider industry no one thinks HN is anything but YC's media outlet and the policies, features and moderator actions here back that up.

The onus is on the platform to prove that their conflict of interest isn't effecting the contents of the site, not on the audience to take their word on faith.