I tried to make the title fit the guidelines and the character limit, then changed it when the community explained why it was important for A16Z to be in the title.
Why do people think we're motivated to “suppress” negative stories about A16Z? They've been criticized forever here and we've never had a problem with it. All we care about is whether a topic makes for an interesting discussion on HN.
And I believe that the mods thinking that a16z was the least critical part of the headline such that it could be cut for space reasons is a huge concern. I'm glad that you changed your mind. But the fact that it was needed worries me and the fact that you can't understand why people were upset is worse.
There doesn't need to be an explicit effort to protect vc firms for your blind spots to shape conversation on this website away from criticizing them.
This argument amounts to an assertion that an editorial judgement about a title that differs from what you consider is most important is axiomatically evidence that we either (a) consciously make decisions to benefit VCs, or (b) unconsciously make decisions that benefit VCs. It allows no room for any other explanations, such as (c) that these actions are of no consequence to VCs, and (d) that we are just focused on our job, which is to uphold the guidelines, keep discussions curious, and avoid repetitive flamewars.
It's noticeable in this subthread that the accusations rely so much on sweeping, unfalsifiable claims and presumptions about our incentives or blind spots, and Kafkaesque logic that allows no space for simple, benign explanations.
Meanwhile, nobody seems to have examined the core assumption; that a title on an HN discussion thread has any consequence or concern for a firm like A16Z. Can anyone explain, specifically, how title changes like this on HN would benefit an outside VC firm?
To answer your literal question of "why do people think..."
For a while there was a widespread standing principle to not assume malice for actions that could be explained as a simple mistake. If only one person follows this policy, it's great. However, so many people were following this policy that it created massive incentives to disguise profit motivated malice as explainable accidents. We're in the midst of a massive backswing against this.
So, there is very little taste for patience when agents of ycombinator make mistakes that benefit a16z such as accidentally removing them from the title of a negative article, due to the billions of dollars entangling ycombinator with the reputation of a16z. This is not because it wasn't an accident- it's because any culture of patience with this will lead (and has led) to an explosion of copycat whoopsies.
> Why do people think we're motivated to “suppress” negative stories about A16Z?
I think a more charitable interpretation of this kind of argument is that the money and power that entities like A16Z have make the possibility of corruption of endeavours like HN trivial.
In light of the ease in which a wealthy entity like A16Z can exert influence over an entity like HN and the track records of various A16Z adjacent/similar people doing similar things to other HN-like entities it's very natural that people are concerned about the possibility of similar things happening here.
Like it or not as an editor at HN you're in a position of power and influence and others with far greater power would certainly leverage what you have here if suited their interests.
Avoiding even the appearance of impropriety is no easy task especially in this medium and I don't envy you in taking it on, but it's an essential part of something like HN. If the users in aggregate don't trust the moderation process or the administrators then this all sort of falls apart and the interesting discussion suffers.
> money and power that entities like A16Z have make the possibility of corruption of endeavours like HN trivial
What does this mean? Why would a VC firm like this "corrupt" HN and how would they do it? And why would we allow them to do it? What would be the motivation of us moderators to allow it?
This is false. Nothing was done to your account at that time, whereas rate-limiting was active on your account at least two weeks ago. Rate limiting is applied to accounts that do things like use HN for political/ideological battle, or post too many low-quality comments, both of which you've been doing. Here are some of the worst of the comments you've been posting in recent months.
The A16Z title issue was no great scandal. It was bog standard moderation, with attention and responsiveness to community sentiment and feedback. That kind of thing happens all the time.
Meanwhile, you post too many comments that break the guidelines and use HN against its intended purpose. HN is only a place people want participate because others make an effort to keep the standards up rather than dragging them down. Please do your part to make HN better not worse if you want to participate here.
"political/ideological battle" is usually interpreted to include posting things that make YCombinator or its affiliates or the USA look bad. Making YC or its affiliates or the USA look bad is also against the intended purpose of HN.
Edit: interesting how after posting this, all of my most recent comments received one downvote, including the one that just straightforwardly answers someone's question.
We actively intervene to ensure posts that are negative towards YC companies are not affected by usual downweights, and give them extra prominence on the front page. That has happened multiple times this week, including yesterday. We've never considered that the policy should also apply to other investment firms.
> all of my most recent comments received one downvote
From what I can see, in the most recent handful of comments, there were some downvotes but not by moderators and not by the same community members (patterns of unfair downvotes get detected and dropped on HN). And I think at least one comment that was downvoted when you posted your edit has now received enough upvotes to be back in the positive.
Of the first two pages of comments (60), covering most of the past 3 days, only 9 have any downvotes and they're from different users. The "most recent" comments are mostly unaffected by downvotes; prior to this one, only two of the past 23 comments had any downvotes.
> including the one that just straightforwardly answers someone's question
That one was odd, and it seemed like an unfair downvote so we've reversed it. But that just one of only two of the past 23 comments that was downvoted.
But really, why do people keep coming up with these false/exaggerated claims to try to cast doubt on our integrity? (Also, in the case of this claim, users can tell if comments have been downvoted from the comment text's shade of grey.)
My own experience is that they've been solid throughout. Certainly better than many other options, at a time when the technical press has been generally disappointing.
I asked last year and was told 404 is the source of too many copycat low quality posts and they have a paywall. In the year since, a bunch of their original reporting has hit the front page and driven interesting discussions.
Just to clarify for anyone reading. 404 does not have a paywall. They have an account wall. Some articles require you to be signed into a free account to read.
As a noob here on HN, that's what I gathered from your previous comment:
> In the year since, a bunch of their original reporting has hit the front page
So, a year ago, before my time, 404 media was moderated in a way that seemed like a ban, but now it no longer appears to be shadowbanned, is that what I'm learning?
If a 404media article makes it to the front page, it's because enough people happened to vouch a [dead] article, which is quite unusual and involves a lot of luck (since most people don't have showdead enabled). Nothing has changed on the mod side as far as I'm aware.
