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Comment by philwelch | Hacker News Reader

It's nice that YC helped these guys, but getting this kind of consideration on a platform is something everyone should be entitled to--you shouldn't need a special "in" with YCombinator to get it. It's like if YC partnered with Apple just to help YC startups get their apps approved.

This makes YC look good, but FB look bad.

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Hey there, Carl Sjogreen from Facebook Platform here.

I'm glad we were able to help Matt out, but am embarrassed he got in this situation to begin with. We're working on some new systems to handle abusive applications (getting rid of which helps users and the entire platform ecosystem) but clearly have some technical and communication issues to work through still, and its totally unacceptable to be taking such harsh measures with applications that aren't doing anything wrong -- let alone being so hard to get in touch with.

The only silver lining of this otherwise unfortunate situation is that it will help make sure it doesn't happen again.

Actually stuff like this just reminds people why one shouldn't deal with monopoly suppliers who are big enough to ignore you without getting hurt in the process.

I don't think the being a monopoly is as much a factor here as being really big is. And of course being big is why you do business with them, they bring many clients/$ too.

In your new system please don't ignore people who have been blacklisted, at least respond with a reason or if you can't do that at least acknowledge that a human has read it and isn't going to take action so poor people like the author doesn't have to sit around wondering if he's even going to get a response.

The technical part is quite understandable. I can't imagine what you guys must deal with in preserving the platform. You have to be a target for every spammer in the world right now. It happens, and it's certainly better for everyone if the platform remains spam-free.

Thanks again for getting it taken care of so quickly!

It's like if YC partnered with Apple just to help YC startups get their apps approved.

Wow, what a great idea! :)

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