Has this been manually delisted from the frontpage? It doesn't say it's flagged, but it's no longer on there.
EDIT: looks like it's #157 now, I think I just misunderstand the ranking mechanism.
EDIT: looks like it's #157 now, I think I just misunderstand the ranking mechanism.
We moderate HN less, not more, when YC or a YC startup is part of the story (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). This doesn't mean we don't moderate at all, of course; that would be too large a loophole. But we do moderate less.
For example, under normal circumstances our standard practice would be to downweight a thread like this one, because outrage posts (what we used to call riler-uppers*) are not normally on topic for Hacker News. We also might edit the title to be less sensational and more accurate and neutral. And we would leave the user flags on. In the present case, we've overriden all of that in order to follow the rule I just mentioned.
* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
I believe this because it makes sense to me.
I think a habit of tempered reactions allows the understanding - that criticism is valuable in healthy doses.
Adding this: Having HN's stance plainly said is valuable too.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43170866
Everything I wrote was the conclusion of original research based entirely on what I read from the founders’ words and what I saw in the video. Apart from the Mastodon post, I saw zero opinions on the matter before posting. The more I looked at it, the stronger I felt the criticism was warranted with those specific terms.
I genuinely do not feel there is a more “accurate and neutral” title I could’ve written. From everything I found, the title looks accurate. As for neutrality, which could surely only amount in this instance to being apologetic, I don’t feel there would have been any point to making the original post if not for the criticism.
I'm biased of course, but when I read "$X is backing $Y to do $Z", I read $Z as what $X is specifically and intentionally backing $Y to do. In this case, that's not accurate. YC would never specifically back a startup to "abuse factory workers"—that would be absurd. Nor is the phrase neutral; it's obviously accusatory.
HN titles aren't supposed to be used to build miniature prosecution cases. On some other sites, it's fine to use titles that way—it certainly maximizes attention, which is great for those sorts of forums, but on HN titles are supposed to use neutral, descriptive language—and then people can use the comments to express their interpretation and their views.
(Edit: Actually, even on HN it's sometimes informally fine to do that too—it is a grey area but sort of light grey, if you see what I mean. That is, sometimes a submission will use a baity title, this helps the story get attention and make the front page, and then moderators will 'sand' the title back down to neutral language and the thread can stay on the front page. We do that when it's a good story for HN—if it's not, we'd be more likely to downweight the article off the front page. The trouble in the present case is that neither of those options are available to us when the story is about YC and/or a YC startup.)
I haven't studied the details so I don't know what a neutral phrase would have been in this case. Some commenters have suggested things like "production line monitoring". I'm sure it's true that technology like this can turn into a Taylorist nightmare, but there surely are also ways to use it humanely, so in this case the real story seems to be that the founders published a video that backfired badly on the internet. Hopefully they will learn from this and not only alter their marketing, but maybe even change the product to be less likely to be abused.
But that's just my superficial take and like I said, I'm biased. More importantly, I appreciate that your intentions were better than I assumed they were and am grateful that you clarified that. Even after years of doing this job, I'm constantly still learning to make fewer assumptions. It's crazy how hard that is!
Fair! I agree with you and I hadn’t realised the sentence as is was accusing Y Combinator in that sense. My intention was something along the lines of “Tell HN: Y Combinator backing AI company whose product aims to abuse factory workers” but it was too long and some nuance was lost in the trimming.
> Nor is the phrase neutral; it's obviously accusatory.
Again, I agree. But as I mentioned before, I also don’t see a non-critical stance which would make the situation worth commenting on, and I do believe it should be commented on. The only reason it’s worth commenting at all is because it’s bad.
> Some commenters have suggested things like "production line monitoring".
Which is a phrase so sterile and euphemistic it immediately made me think of George Carlin’s bit on soft language.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=o25I2fzFGoY
Also, I disagree with that description because it fails to capture the point (see below).
> I'm sure it's true that technology like this can turn into a Taylorist nightmare, but there surely are also ways to use it humanely
The crux of the matter to me is that this is inhumane by design. It’s not just the video, their page on YC’s website makes it patently clear via the written word they care about factory owners but not the workers. This is neither a marketing problem nor an issue of bad clients abusing the product—the founders plainly described how they intend the product to be used, and that use is inhumane. Which is why I criticised the company and the founders above the technology.
> Even after years of doing this job, I'm constantly still learning to make fewer assumptions. It's crazy how hard that is!
Believe me, I understand. Over the years I have also had to do a lot of internet moderation myself, and you are a big influence on my approach. There is little doubt in my mind that your intentions are pure and you genuinely care for what is best for the community. If we had one of you for each internet forum, the world would be a better place. Thank you for all that you do, and for your commitment to remaining humble and fair.
It's the word "abuse". Even in that very poorly-produced video, there was no abuse. Bad word choice at worst. There's nothing neutral about the assumption of abuse.
And "Y Combinator backing..." makes it sound like YC is on board with "abuse".
Here's a neutral, accurate title: "YC24 startup Optifye makes software to optimize factory labor that could lead to abuse."