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> undisclosed advertisement

To be fair, it is disclosed on the FAQ page:

  Another kind of job ad is reserved for YC-funded startups. These appear on the front page, but are not stories: they have no vote arrows, points, or comments. They begin part-way down and fall steadily. Only one is on the front page at a time. The rest are listed at jobs.

I don't know where else they would disclose it, the fact that you can't vote or comment on it clearly shows you it's different. It's way preferable to e.g. astroturfing, and is not a dark pattern a la Amazon tricking you into prime

It should be clearly stated as an ad though, google wouldn't get away with not marking the top 2 rows of the result page as advertisement because "they disclosed so on the FAQ"

IANAL, but isn't there a law about online ads similar to what you mention? But then again job postings probably aren't typically considered ads...

Not a lawyer either, but the "ads" (and I think they are ads in the dictionary sense, plus HN refers to them as such in the FAQ) are literally on the website of the company they are advertising for. It's hard to imagine that is not allowed.

But it isn't an ad. You are not required or incentivized to buy anything.

It's a "job ad". Someone paid money to have it put in front of your face.

No, they didn't, actually. It's a perk for YC companies. They paid nothing.

OK! They didn't pay for it, but it's still an ad, and I still think it should be marked as such.

It is a part of an agreement including a financial transaction.

In the other direction than what one would normally expect with an ad.

They didn't.

And neither do you if you post in 'who is hiring' on the 1st of the month.

The FAQ literally calls it a “job ad”. Ads don’t necessarily need to drive sales for them to be ads.

Fine, if you want to split hairs. But you knew what I meant and are simply responding to the least charitable reading of my comment.

A job ad promotes the existence of a vacancy. The kind of ads that you need to disclose are ads are the ones that are about the product, not about the vacancies at the company producing the product.

> But you knew what I meant and are simply responding to the least charitable reading of my comment.

Um, no:

> You are not required or incentivized to buy anything.

'Ad' doesn't require persuasion to purchase anything. Ads for political candidates (urging you to vote) & many causes (urging you to change other behaviors) are still ads. Often such ads are donated, with no payment for placement.

That said, I think the implicit disclosure via the declaration of affiliation with the site operators – YC – & unique behavior of these posts is sufficient for readers to understand the situation. Even without any label, most people would classify such posts as "job ads".

Whatever harm might accrue to the absolutely densest readers who don't get that seems rather small. Probably less than the harm that other readers might suffer from any crude 'ad' label, which risks leading an even larger group of slightly-less-dense readers to make unwarranted assumptions that such placements are sold for cash via some ad department, or that HN is generally open to paid advertising.

All communication is imperfect, with tradeoffs.

Currently on the front page is:

>Smarking (YC W15) Is Hiring a Product Lead to digitize the parking industry (lever.co)

You could disclose it as such

>AD: Smarking (YC W15) Is Hiring a Product Lead to digitize the parking industry (lever.co)

> I don't know where else they would disclose it

Inline, I assume; "[Ad] Foo hiring bar"

How is it a dark pattern or undisclosed advertising? I thought it was one of the perks of being a YC company. There is very little advertising on this site, and what is here, e.g. jobs for YC companies, is labeled and on topic.

Hm... i was leaning as well to dark pattern/ad. Would be interesting to have a poll to understand how many users find this acceptable and click.

> How is it a dark pattern or undisclosed advertising?

Ads here are displayed exactly like a post with extremely subtle differences. Anyone new to the site would think it's a post and click it... To me that's a dark pattern

If we're going by formal definitions, here are a few[0]:

  More broadly, dark patterns supplant "user value...in favor of shareholder value".

  a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying overpriced insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills

The hiring posts are deliberately made to look like every other submission, with the exception of not being able to comment on them. So in that way, they're misleading about what they are. They don't really trick users into doing anything, unless you count clicks from users who think they're about to engage with actual community content.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern

The posts are explicitly differentiated from normal submissions - you can't comment and they usually say something like "X (YC year) is hiring". That's not a dark pattern. I agree that some people may not understand what or why these posts are and not look into it (answers are easily available) - but that doesn't make this a dark pattern.

Hackernews has minimal ads, lax account requirements, professional moderation, minimal intrusion from owners - and you are hyperventilating about 1 post in a 100 being a marked ad?

really arbitrary moderation imho

I'm not "hyperventilating", I am attempting to answer your question...no need to be rude. Clearly it's a matter of opinion about where the line of "dark pattern" starts.

If you expect people to be completely nice to you, perhaps you should not falsely accuse others of manipulating users for profit.

I disagree that it's a false accusation. YCombinator benefits financially from putting their job postings on the front page, I think we can all agree on that. You seem to disagree that it's "manipulation" to make their job posting look nearly identical to a normal, organic user submission. I think it is a subtle dark pattern and explained my reasoning.

You can't vote on it, you can't comment, and the title fits the pattern I mentioned earlier - it's absurd to describe this as "nearly identical" to the normal submission. Having occasional, untargetted, marked, on topic advertising on a free site is about as far from "dark pattern" as it is possible to be.

A dark pattern has nothing to do with whether they're justified in doing it (for instance, because this is a free site). The submissions could be marked with "YC Sponsored Post" they're still totally justified in doing it, but it would be less of a dark pattern than it is now.

They are not 'deliberately made to look like every other submission', they simply look like every other submission because that's what HN submissions look like. If they were made to stand out you'd likely be complaining that they get even more preferential treatment because they stand out.

If you don't like them just ignore them.

There is nothing misleading about them and they don't trick users because the vast bulk of the visitors to HN knows what these are and if you didn't it's explained in the docs.

They don't trick you into buying anything and they don't serve to market the product of the start-up that is posting the position. The only difference is that they don't have to wait until the 1st of the month and that they get to post an item all by themselves, which seems like a pretty small price to pay compared to say having a site full of advertising or some massive commercial drive.

HN is rather more than less restricted whenever the companies that YC invests in come up, this is the one exception.

>they simply look like every other submission because that's what HN submissions look like.

But they're not HN submissions, that's the point.

>If they were made to stand out you'd likely be complaining that they get even more preferential treatment because they stand out.

No I wouldn't, but thanks for telling me how I would feel.

They are HN submissions, but they are restricted in functionality because of past experiences with those ads when they were treated as ordinary submissions.

If you want to discuss the company or its products you are entirely free to post an article or a text submission.

The amount of entitlement in this thread is quite revolting.

My definition of "HN submission" is "something that any member of the HN community can submit." You seem to be using a different definition that excludes the vast majority of the HN userbase.

I honestly could not care less what your definition is, these have passed through the regular submission queue in the past and it turned into a shitshow and since then they've been given protected status. Clearly that doesn't stop people from wanting to revert that change, which is probably proof that that was an excellent decision.

Special posts given special statuses are by definition not normal HN submissions, so representing them as nearly identical to normal HN submissions is misleading.

They get posted to the top of the page and automatically decay, they are clearly marked in the title. To begrudge YC this one pay-off for their efforts and funding of HN seems a little entitled to me. No vote arrows, points and comments is distinction enough for me. I don't think I ever clicked on one by mistake, they are pretty obvious.

If you think you can build a better HN then maybe you should?

The top comment in this thread is the claim that it is a dark pattern, and many of the children comments are supporting that, so maybe consider that your perspective is not the majority one, or it's at least not as clear as you suggest.

I'm sure there are a whole bunch of us that _don't_ find it to be an issue and don't feel the need to prolong its discussion. This type of topic draws in the type of individual that finds it to be an issue: those that don't, move on.

A lack of public support for an idea is not evidence for support for the idea, so I'm not sure why you would even bring up the hypothetical "whole bunch of us" that secretly feel the other way.

You've been here for many years and you probably are well aware of all of this, but in case you feel like re-reading an old thread:

Nothing new was written in this one that wasn't explicitly covered here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7624792

Thanks, I read it. I don't mind the no-commenting rule tbh, if the submission was tagged as "YC Hiring Announcement" To me, the submissions currently feel like they're trying to present themselves as organic content. I understand you think differently. It would cost YC nothing to explicitly tag them though and put the whole "dark pattern" criticism to rest.

A 'dark pattern' presumes intent to deceive. Here it is pretty much the opposite:

Hackernews started out as a way for YC to talk to their would-be founders (it was called 'start-up news' originally) and the rest of the postings are the noise and those are the signal. If you are unaware of the relationship between YC and HN you could be forgiven but after more than a decade here I don't think that excuse holds.

Marking job ads more explicitly won't change anything, it is just a way to pressure YC into making some change to satisfy nit pickers and there is far more important stuff to do, and is as far as I'm concerned off-topic given that the question was 'why can't we comment on these postings' and that question has been answered afaic.

Furthermore: the who is hiring threads are there as well for everybody else as well, which given the audience and the fact that these compete directly with YC funded companies should be proof positive that no malicious intent was ever present. If it were then those threads would have never happened.

I understand they can do whatever they want, and I also know the relationship between YC and HN. They could make job posts blend in even more, artificially boost YC-positive content, and weigh down YC-negative content, and they would be totally within their rights, and if we don't like it we can leave.

I think I understand why you are defending HN. You see how a small community grew to what it is now, and all of the unpaid work that went into that. I don't think that is in conflict with the idea of being super transparent (to the point where it's obvious to everyone) about things like sponsored posts. It's clearly not obvious to everyone.

You make a good point about the hiring threads. I agree those are evidence that YC is making an effort to support non YC startups.

If I didn’t reply to you here, what would you assume from that? That I didn’t have a response? That I didn’t see your response? That I agreed with you? That I disagreed but didn’t think it was worth the effort to continue the discussion because there really no way to change your mind given you dismissed me out of hand?

For what it’s worth, I debated initially commenting at all because I thought it was unlikely to be productive. I’m sure I’m not the only person who considered this (sheer numbers in this case make that unlikely) and they made the choice not to.

I understand your point, but it's not evidence for the opposing belief. And it cuts both ways, not just one way...people who think that it's a dark pattern but also don't care to engage.

Upvotes are a signal of support for an idea in the community. Whether strong or weak is debatable, but implying that they mean the opposite because of all the people who didn't care to vote is silly.

dang's response on why job ads don't have comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767319

Thanks, I forgot that and would probably never have found it.

There was another variant more recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31602113.

There's also https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... but most of those comments simply explain why the job ads exist.

It's a pattern, but definitely not dark or undisclosed.

The system and rationale are explained in the HN FAQ and repeatedly reiterated by the mods.

i.e This is one of the things HN gives back to YC, for funding it.

Compared to online advertising, jobs posts targeted at a technical audience seems like a reasonable trade.

What do you mean “compared to online advertising”? It is online advertising lmao.

>It's a pattern, but definitely not dark or undisclosed.

Isn't it a dark pattern something that you're not upfront about? Because...

>The system and rationale are explained in the HN FAQ and repeatedly reiterated by the mods.

... I have to go to the FAQ (and how do you easily get to the FAQ when you're on https://news.ycombinator.com, anyway? it's not exactly easy to find, I had to Google it) to learn about it, or a mod has to show up in a thread like this to mention it. There's nothing at face value when the post is on the front page that alludes to what it is, and I'd hardly say that removing the ability to comment on that post does much to clarify what it is.

A pattern can be dark even if unintentionally.

To get into pedantic semantics:

Yes, I agree it's opaque- perhaps not totally clear on first sight.

But a dark pattern has connotations of some intention to deceive, which I don't think is occurring here.

The FAQ is linked at the bottom of every HN page.

D'oh. Egg, meet face. Thanks dang.

The font is rather small.

Eh, I don't even think I looked at the bottom, to be honest. Pretty sure I was posting in bad faith without realizing it[1]. Gonna give myself a break from here for a bit.

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32588809

Smarking, Skio, a couple other ones.