Everyone knows that the best pr strategy when your being attacked by someone who's claims appear true to anyone who has their eyes open is to keep quiet and let it pass, instead you blew this up.
I now believe them. Congratulations.
The stuff about YC in general and Stripe in general I left out, partly because it's not my purview and partly because there's nothing concrete there.
Perhaps one day I will be zen enough to let false accusations fly by as I abide in bliss. Not there yet.
"Someone can disprove specific claims with hard evidence, but because they did so, the original claim must be accurate."
I don't think "everyone knows" that if a post making baseless claims about you is going viral, and you have concrete proof to dismiss some of the claims, that you should just "keep quiet."
Perhaps in some cases, perhaps not in others.
In this case, the integrity of this forum was called into question, and I think a transparent response is warranted and effective.
But... to each their own.
I still think anything about PR erode our society in general. We prefer to hide, avoid telling the truth and discard any transparency.
I welcome the well formulated argument of dang. It contains his point of view and multiple missing facts about the situation.
By having both point of view and the different fact we can make our own mind about the situation. This is what critical thinking is about.
YC can earn a lot more by funding competition and has a lot to lose from the community from mistreating competition or favoriting others.
I also haven't seen any evidence suggesting any.
At a scale of funding hundreds of companies/year, nothing will go perfect all the time either, i suppose.
Fyi: long time HN reader, Belgium, not affiliated and received a ( correct ) ban from dang one time ;)
If I try to argue about 11 things I'm not an expert on, it should downweight _my_ arguments on the 1 thing I actually know about.