Plenty of HN users post about all those issues without difficulty, and the idea that HN bans people for criticizing VCs is just silly; criticizing VCs is the house special. The issue is ideological rhetoric, internet ranting, and other forms of flamebait. We don't want that because it leads to shitty flamewar threads that are all the same and drive away the best users. On HN, the idea is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.

I know that when your comments are moderated, whether by users (through downvotes and flags) or by moderators, the temptation is to feel like you're being suppressed because of your views ("thoughtcrime" is a common term; "groupthink" is another). But if you read the site guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and think sincerely about the intended use of the site, you'll soon notice how your posts have been breaking that.

In terms of helping YC's business interests, our imperative is simply to try to keep HN a good place for curious conversation on the internet. That's what keeps the community happy and what keeps the best users—the users who come for intellectual curiosity, not smiting enemies. A happy, high-quality community is by far the most valuable thing about HN [1], so it wouldn't make sense for us to optimize for anything else [2]. That's one reason why we moderate HN less, not more, when YC or YC startups are the topic [3].

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

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

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