[jpdoctor]

Thanks for that link. FTL: Hacker News is operated by a company, Y Combinator, which has a significant financial incentive to censor or promote the links and discussion posted on the site that relate to Y Combinator-funded startups (or competitors of them).

Haven't seen much discussion about this HN flaw. Interesting...

[anthonyb]

No, because everything along these lines that appears on the front page gets killed. It's one of the major flaws of HN imo - a huge lack of transparency.

[pbiggar]

I don't believe YC messes with the algorithm or moderation to benefit YC companies. My YC startup got attacked on HN (2 years ago!), and I've seen many hostile articles and comments about other YC companies.

[Edit: fixed ambiguous antecedent]

[jpdoctor]

The antecedent of "this" is ambigous.

You don't think it true that HN has significant financial incentive to censor or promote the links of YC companies?

or you think there has been a lot of discussion about the HN conflict-of-interest? (perhaps I don't read regularly enough.)

I suppose you could mean both.

[pbiggar]

Fixed, I hope. Is that clearer? Sorry for the ambiguity.

[slurgfest]

It is brought up constantly but it is not the kind of discussion which seems to be much approved of. (In the interest of disclosure, I don't even care)

[pbiggar]

As a YC founder, whose YC startup got torn apart on HN, I find no truth to this statement.

[slurgfest]

You don't think it is brought up or you do think that it is approved of? (edit: I never indicated any level of agreement with YC using HN to unfairly promote YC companies, so if you are responding to that then maybe you meant to respond to my parent)

[pbiggar]

I did in fact intend to respond to the parent. Apologies.