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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

That is not, in fact, why Torba was removed from the YC network. He was removed for hostile trolling of other YC founders.

The thread that immediately precipitated his removal is still online; you can just go look at it:

https://www.facebook.com/garry/posts/10102671732962523?pnref...

(It's buried under Anisa Mirza's reply).

Unless it's your claim that trolling is a political stance deserving of protection, in which case we can all just agree to disagree about our definitions and move on, his support for Trump was not the problem here.

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OMG, that's really bad. He does not even try to make a point. He's just repeating "build the wall" and calling other people cucks.

Being proud of "meme"-ing Trump into office, wow. Torba repeats how his right on free speech is violated, but is an outright dick to everyone around him because they have another view on some topic...

I can't use your link b/c I don't have a FB account.

>He was removed for hostile trolling of other YC founders.

Precisely, the words used by YC were "threatening and harassing" comments. To my knowledge this is the exact comment YC cited:

>All of you: fuck off. Take your morally superior, elitist, virtue signaling bullshit and shove it.

>I call it like I see it, and I helped meme a President into office, cucks.

I certainly see how this speech can be viewed as rude and disagreeable. But I don't really know how you can say that he made any serious threats or was honestly harassing anyone.

No, that is not the extent of the thread or the allegation.

It's probably not worth litigating this further, though.

Ok well settle your case if you wish. But that was what YC themselves claimed, according to this: https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/12/pro-trump-ceo-gets-booted-...

I don't believe that link supports your claim.

Here is the exact text from the article. It states exactly what I already said it does:

>While Torba paints this as a free speech issue, YC told BuzzFeed that he was kicked out for “for speaking in a threatening, harassing way toward other YC founders” — particularly in this Facebook comment:

>All of you: fuck off. Take your morally superior, elitist, virtue signaling bullshit and shove it.

>I call it like I see it, and I helped meme a President into office, cucks.

That TechCrunch article cites BuzzFeed as its source for the claim that YC said that they kicked him out particularly for that comment, but I don't see that in the linked BuzzFeed article [1]. It says that he was kicked out "for violating its harassment policy", and that this occurred after the Facebook comment, but I don't see any statement in the BuzzFeed article that YC mentioned that comment in particular. I may be missing it, though.

[1]: https://www.buzzfeed.com/nitashatiku/trump-supporting-startu...

I think we're talking past each other. I agree that's why YC banned him. I agree that he said that thing on the Facebook thread. But he said other things as well, and, apparently, other things prior to that Facebook thread.

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