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> MOC uses alternate accounts for personal safety reasons
Does MOC think PG is going to have him whacked? I primarily use throwaways here since I don't care about karma, but this is absurd, and makes MOC look crazy.
I assume this is the essay you're talking about? https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2023/01/08/ai-will-kill...
By that line of logic, there’s no need for courts. You can just ask the suspect if he committed the crime. If he says he didn’t do it, we’ll now you have your answer and you can let him go.
No one knows for sure why he was banned but the most credible theory is that:
(1) he knew too much about YC’s lack of support for Aaron Swartz (who was a Reddit cofounder, thus YC alum) and his reputation when the man was in federal crosshairs, and discrediting MOC was a preemptive strike of sorts.
(2) he pointed out the existence of algorithmic manipulations (slowban, rankban) before anyone knew those were a thing.
(3) he wrote some blog post in 2012 you can’t even find but that one of the YC partners thought was personally about him. I can’t verify this because I think the post was deleted years ago.
It could be all or any of those in some combination.
Or none of them.
His comment history just ends after a string of normal comments. And it's not like he had a bunch of negative reply guys -- he usually was the reply guy.
Chased away was probably the wrong way to put it.