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Comment by kefka | Hacker News Reader

Hmm..

I've had the same reaction when I modified/hacked/made the python ML code to fix Thalmic Myo's armband so Linux and the rest of us could use it. 1

In that case, YC censors all articles about member companies with a script. Makes sense, to protect their income, but altogether sleezy without some sort of disclosure as to why (would have been nice to see "article not allowed due to YC ownership").

The only thing I can guess is there's some sort of fiduciary something, that caused the mods to dupe-delete.

1 http://hackaday.com/2014/11/18/thalmic-labs-shuts-down-free-...

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> In that case, YC censors all articles about member companies with a script.

Holy magoly, that is 100% untrue. The truth is the opposite: when there are articles critical of YC companies, we are careful to moderate them less, not more, than we normally would. That's the first principle of HN moderation and was literally the first thing pg said when he was showing me how to moderate the site. I hadn't even had a chance to grab a chair before he blurted it out.

We wouldn't dream of doing anything like what you describe—not because it wouldn't work (though it wouldn't), but because as members of the community ourselves, we wouldn't want to be treated that way.

It's always possible to get an answer to a question about a specific post. It's better to send such things to hn@ycombinator.com because (a) they're off-topic here, and (b) we might not see them otherwise. Please note that phrase specific post. Without specific links, it's harder to clear things up.

It was this (hn:kefka) account when I posted the data about the Myo. I posted it multiple times, with the word "Thalmic" in there. All were killed instantly on creation. A few minutes could pass, and a user-based flag kill would be understandable.

In my experiences, instant decisions like that are results of a script. Obvious assumptions were that it was HN's script, protecting HN's assets.

You've got one heck of a community here. I try to positively add... But I know we don't see eye-to-eye on quite many things.

I like that you feel that way about the community, and it's fine if we don't always see eye-to-eye. HN wouldn't be as good a community if we all did. The main thing we're trying for is assuming good faith in such cases (which isn't easy. I don't find it easy when criticized, and don't expect anyone else to.)

From https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=kefka, it looks like your account lost story submission privileges in Feb 2014 after having posted a bunch of stories that weren't appropriate for HN. That was at least 9 months before you posted anything about Thalmic/Myo, so I'm sure that the latter had nothing to do with it. (I'm also sure because we'd never take submission privileges away for that reason.)

In Dec 2015 we restored story submission privileges to your account, probably because we saw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10537529, which was a solid submission. If an account is posting the occasional substantive story—especially ones that other users aren't submitting—we err on the side of restoring privileges.

Thank you for clearing that up, dang.

It was indeed a script that stopped those stories, but not in the nefarious way I suspected. I'm honestly not sure which stories triggered the "no submission" flag, but it does make sense.

I would like if we could personally see flags like that (say on our user page). I've never been a fan of hell-* removal of privileges, only to think of worse cases like this.

Thank you for being honest and frank about this.

-Josh

Last night's discussion wasn't dupe-flagged. If what you claim here is true, it should have been.

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