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The upvotes on the current post are fine - the reason you saw the submission rise in rank is that startup launch posts by YC startups get special placement on the front page (this is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html). Not every such post does, but some do.

In other words, your perception wasn't wrong, but the interpretation was off. I've put "Launch HN" and "YC W26" back in the title to make that clearer - I edited them out earlier, which was my mistake.

As for the booster comments, those are pretty common on launch threads and often pretty innocent - most people who aren't active HN users have no idea that it's against the rules. We do our best to communicate about that, but it's not a cardinal sin—there are far worse offenses.

john_strinlai 107 days ago

hi dang. while you are here -- are comments artificially ordered on this post?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47326953 is grey (i.e <=0 karma). my top-level comment is at 14 karma. we posted within 15 minutes of each other. their comment is higher up the page. ive never seen something like that before.

the two posts calling out unethical behavior have been living at the bottom of this post the entire time, until a couple of actually [flagged] comments ended up under them.

i do not care about the karma itself, at all. but i do care to know if launch/show posts have comment sections with cherry-picked ordering or organic ordering.

edit 2: i am at 19 points, and now below two grey (<=0 karma) comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47326455). whats up dang?

edit 3 (~1 hour later): you've responded to a handful of other comments and ignored this one as it becomes more and more evident that someone has artificially ordered the comments to ensure that critical comments are at the bottom of the page. it has shattered my perception of show/launch posts to know that you manually curate the comments to form a specific narrative. i really (naively) thought you guys were much more neutral about that sort of thing.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

> you've responded to a handful of other comments and ignored this one

I hadn't seen this until 30 seconds ago. The assumption of moderator omniscience leads to a lot of mistaken conclusions!

We marked offtopic comments offtopic, which lowers them on the page. This is standard HN moderation. If we didn't do this, nearly every thread would be choked with something offtopic at the top.

At the same time, we haven't killed the posts or put them in a "stub for offtopicness" [1] like we otherwise would. They're still here for people who want to read them, while at the same time the main discussion can be about the main topic, which is the startup launch.

HN is actively moderated and always has been. Downweighting offtopic/generic comments is one of the biggest things we've ever discovered for improving the quality of the threads. For us it's about the quality of the site as a whole, not specific narratives, but of course everyone can (and will) make up their own mind about this. What I can tell you is (a) the way we do these things has been stable for a long time (HN time is measured in decades, not years), and (b) we're always willing to answer questions about it.

Oh, and (3) - when YC or a YC-funded startup is part of a story, then we moderate less than we otherwise would [2]. We do still moderate, though—we just do it less.

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

john_strinlai 107 days ago

im sorry, but i disagree quite strongly with your suggestion that a comment about the unethical behavior of a company is off-topic on a post by that company launching their product.

especially when that company wants you to curl | bash their code onto your machine -- potential users deserve to know that despite being a YC-backed company (which would typically be a positive indicator, people may reduce their scrutiny) that they have been caught scraping data they shouldnt be, and then using that data for marketing, and refuse to respond to anyone who bring it up.

but it is your world and i am just living in it, so i will carry on. i appreciate that you did not collapse them.

Dang, Although I really appreciate the work you put in. I am not quite sure if the criticism of said company because of genuine reasons and suspicions about it in launch HN of said company is offtopic. As John said, I agree with him on the aspect that the definition of offtopic might vary for us then it seems.

But if I may ask, doesn't the policy of moderate less not more your (3) point opposite to what you said about offtopic from how I perceive it?

> Sure, we marked the offtopic comments offtopic, which lowers them on the page. This is standard HN moderation. If we didn't do this, then nearly every thread would be choked with something offtopic at the top.

>Oh, and (3) - when YC or a YC-funded startup is part of a story, then we moderate less than we otherwise would [2]. We do still moderate, though—we just do it less.

I would suggest that the minor disagreements that we have is because these two points seem contradictory to me from how I perceive it. I would suggest (if possible) to moderate less as you mention not more and let the order of ranking be natural which in this case might be that john's comments can come at the first place for example. Because you are moderating it by putting it into downweighting it and that's one of the concerns that we sort of have.

> At the same time, we haven't killed the posts or put them in a "stub for offtopicness" [1] like we otherwise would. They're still here for people who want to read them, while at the same time the main discussion can be about the main topic, which is the startup launch.

Also regarding this. I might have to trust ya when you say this but I do feel like its within the HN spirit that when a company gets launched, the critisims of the company and its past gets talked about.

On top of my head I remember some VPN company sometime ago which used TEE encryption by intel. One of the first comments or similar was about how the guy had shady past because they were the former server owner of liberachat and some controversy surrounding it and how they wouldn't want to run said VPN (other comments were about the trust within Intel in general)

My point is that this might be considered offtopic according to ya now but those were active and quite on top. So maybe I am recollecting events differently but it does seem to have some idea that this doesn't seem offtopic (atleast to me, I could be wrong though, I usually am but still)

With all of this in mind, I don't think that its necessarily offtopic Sir. I'd really appreciate it if for better accuracy you can have the flow of comments be natural in this regards in this particular thread as We'd really appreciate it if possible. Thanks!

Thoughts?

tomhow 107 days ago

This post is about the launch of a YC company and its product. It's reasonable that when a company launches a product, the discussion is focused on the product that it is launching. We moderate that way whether it's a YC company's Launch HN or anyone else posting a Show HN. Keeping discussion on-topic is one of the most important things we moderators do, and is the main reason HN is a place where people like to participate.

Criticisms of the company for past conduct are valid, and we're leaving the criticisms here for everyone to see as per our long-standing policy. But it should be viewed in context: a thread about that event already had 11 hours on the front page 12 days ago. They have been heavily criticized for what they did, are carrying reputational consequences, and they should have learned that the HN community and GitHub users and management are strongly disapproving of this kind of activity. They should be given the chance to learn and reform and be judged for what they do now and into the future.

The most on-topic thing to discuss in this thread is the company's product, and there seems to be some good discussion about that.

wtallis 107 days ago

The idea of giving spammers a second chance seems truly bizarre to me. Have you ever un-blocked an email address that you previously blacklisted for spamming you? Do you think recipients of spam from this company want to give them a second chance?

I'm not necessarily saying the people behind this should be completely blacklisted from the entire industry, but when a company earns a place on my block list for behavior like that, it's permanent. They need to start over with a different business model. Failure of the company is a reasonable and fair consequence for such scandalous behavior, especially for a company at such an early stage.

I think I agree with ya, Although I remember some VPN company related to liberachat ownership where something offtopic wasn't handled such way. In general, I think that if both you and dang say something consistent. Then I do trust you and hackernews moderation for being fairly transparent about it and I really appreciate it. It could very well be that I remember that instant where off-topic=on-topic and considering you guys are human (Underappreciated humans keeping this site usually clean!!)

I think that some of it is okay to happen and I won't question further about it. We can have some minor differences about Off-topic and On-topic and I am okay with this difference and I really appreciate the work done towards Hackernews by the moderation team in aggregate :)

And in essence yeah, off-topic and manual downweighing is still pretty okay with me for what its worth and it seems to be something impartial and not a preferential treatment to it being YC company so I suppose that's fair even :)

> Criticisms of the company for past conduct are valid, and we're leaving the criticisms here for everyone to see as per our long-standing policy. But it should be viewed in context: a thread about that event already had 11 hours on the front page 12 days ago. They have been heavily criticized for what they did, are carrying reputational consequences, and they should have learned that the HN community and GitHub users and management are strongly disapproving of this kind of activity. They should be given the chance to learn and reform and be judged for what they do now and into the future.

I feel like I am quite a forgiving person actually. They haven't responded to any comments on that thread or on these comments. Now, that could be because they don't want to get themselves into any controversy and that's totally fine by me Tomhow.

My issue is that You mention how they were critized for what they did 12 days ago and you ask me to judge them for what they are now but 12 days isn't a great period of time if you may understand and the only reason they stopped was because they got caught in public essentially. So its even hard for me to forgive them especially when I had realized that they bought the domain intentionally a month ago so it was the intention / pre-meditated thought on doing what they were doing and going ahead with it that I had found issue with. Accidents happen and people are really forgiving actually but its hard to forgive something pre-meditated in such short period of time.

And I took a few hours of my life trying to get this point across in this thread simply because I want future companies to know that there is a better path than doing something bad pre-meditated (Accidents will always happen but once again, people are/can be forgiving of them but this wasn't an accident sadly)

I want future companies to know that the upshot of doing anything clearly bad intentionally isn't worth it. That's simply it. Just don't try to do anything bad intentionally (for more profit) and you are on my good side :)

And money can sometimes bend morality, so if anything, its also my criticism of them wants me that if I ever create something, to think about what I have said publicly as well to just make the equation tend slightly towards the approach that I expect from other companies into anything that (if) I build myself.

Even though its hard to like them and they might not have gained at the moment, They will have moments in the future as well. So I wish that they take a lesson and from a more truly human respective (we are all flesh after all) into thinking about the ethics of the situation. It's uncomfortable but that's what needed imo sometimes.

Aside from that, I still wish them luck in their life and their project as they are still human as well and I genuinely wish them that within the moments of future, they prove themselves when they get the chance and I would hope that they one day can regain my trust back too if thats the case haha!

It's also worth mentioning that they are Indians and I am Indian too. I am bullish about Indian startup and its culture and more to a degree my nation at the moment and that's actually why I am harsher on them too. I expect better from the people of my nation and to a degree, my community and I come to this position with love/passion, and in that regards I will continue expecting better and wishing for them better at the same time.

So I hope I could get my point across to you and once again, I appreciate both your work and dang's work. Have a nice day Sir!

Adding onto it, My comments are also ranked low. This comment on which dang replied has 4 upvotes which I think that this is at the 4th last of this post and the other comment that I made on your comment where I responded to ya has 3 upvotes.

Thanks dang but can you please explain there being two accounts who wrote something very small comment and one account being completely new and the other being 7 months old only being invoked in this case.

Clearly I am not the only one here as john_strinlai here seems to have had somewhat of the same conclusion as me.

Dang I know you care about this community so can you please talk more what you think about this in particular as well.

I understand that YC companies get preferential treatment, Fine by me. But this feels something larger to me

I have written everything that I could find in this thread from the same post being shown here 3 days ago in anywhere.ai link to now changing to github to skirt off HN rule that same link can't be posted in short period of time and everything.

This feels somewhat intentional just like the spam issue, I hope you understand what I mean.

(If you also feel suspicious, Can you then do a basic analysis/investigiation with all of these suspicious points in mind and everything please as well and upload the results in an anonymous way if possible?)

I wish you to have a nice day and waiting for your thoughts on all of this.

I'm happy to answer as best I can! but I'm having trouble understanding what you're specifically asking.

If https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47327129 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47328465 don't answer your questions, can you maybe try picking the most important question and making it as specific as you can? Then I can take a crack at that and we can go from there.

https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=47326101

Sure let me better explain what I'd like if possible.

I'd like to have some information within 1) time frame of this from 0-80 upvotes which feels the most upward of this curve and 2) time frame of the whole article and I would like three datapoints in all of this:

So imagine we take every people who upvoted this thread and then we find three data points and average (median not mean for better representation) them together for anonymity purposes:

1. The date of the accounts

2. The karma of the accounts

3. The words written by those accounts (optional) [But I have done some work on that and I have found this to be a good factor on if someone is truly a bot or not]

Because, Although you mention that the upvotes are fine. I'd still really appreciate it if we can find any form of data backing that statement up and hopefully knowing that nothing fishy is going on as you may understand that this company has done a lot of fishy stuff in its past and all the fishy stuff which I have talked about in this thread too makes me feel like just a minor bit more deeper look into it/transparency would personally be really appreciated and the community would like it too!

Have a nice day dang and looking forward to your next comment!

Sorry, but this is much too complicated for me to follow, and I believe I've already answered the main points: what happened to the thread and what was going on with the upvotes and comments.

That's fair dang. Sorry if it got too complicated. I trust ya in that case that the comments are fine from your one of comments to me here. Any case of botting must have been spotted by you guys if there was a case.

It was just that they raised quite a large number of red alerts for me personally with the whole thing.

Just to be on the same page, Is there anything suspicious about the upvotes in this page in sense of being upvoted by bot accounts in general from your observation especially during the start of this thread?

Can you please just talk more about this as in confirmation because I still have some disbelief about it given its shady history and the whole way this thread unfolded. I feel as if there feels some likelihood to me that this post got (bot-upvoted?) at some point or the other.

Or did all of the upvotes came from genuine account and it was just that this got to front page due to hackernews preferential treatment? Can you just talk more about it because if anything, I might still learn something new either way.

Dang, Has there ever been any YC startup which employed in shady practice like using bots to upvote their HN posts or use bot accounts which got caught in the history of this website?