Paul Graham (the only "thought leader" behind this website) loudly campaigns against the current U.S. administration almost every day on Twitter.
One YC-backed founder out of more than 10,000 is volunteering with DOGE.
A more thorough response to this trope can be found here:
Does he? https://x.com/paulg (maybe moderated by Musk/Twitter) only shows tweets about Gaza suffering which could be construed as criticising the current administration. On the contrary, I see multiple tweets jerking off Elon Musk (part of the current administration) and calling for compassion and personal sacrifice towards people who voted for Trump. Yes, there's "why you should vote for Kamala" tweet, but nothing critical of the current Trump regime. Let alone daily.
If you follow the logic of his essays—especially ones like “How to Make Wealth,” “Do Things that Don’t Scale,” or “Hackers and Painters”—you end up in a world where:
• The best people ignore rules that slow them down.
• Regulation is often just cargo-cult bureaucracy.
• Wealth is proof of virtue, or at least utility. Wealth + the rest = do what you want if you think you’re right and can get away with it
• Institutions should get out of the way of smart individuals.
• And the market, not the government, should determine value.
The point is, none of it has anything to do with the way we moderate HN – which of the conflicting cues would we follow?
HN has had more front-page-visible, heavily upvoted/discussed stories about DOGE than anything else this year, along with several others relating to the administration, with the overwhelming sentiment in the articles and comments being critical.
Dang has commented at length on the matter several times:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
While it's true that he has spoken against Trump many times, Garry Tan is very close to Thiel, Musk, and the MAGA movement in general. Didn't he recently show support for DOGE as well?
Of course, YC is more than its current CEO and hopefully this doesn't affect the moderation of this website :)
He's on the board of YC, which appoints the CEO [1], and he still has a lot of influence. He still has dinner with dang from time to time to talk about HN [2].
> While it's true that he has spoken against Trump many times, Garry Tan is very close to Thiel, Musk, and the MAGA movement in general. Didn't he recently show support for DOGE as well?
I don't think that's a completely accurate characterisation. Garry continues to identify as a Democrat [3]. He works with people across the political spectrum to make the playing field fair for the earliest-stage startups, which is consistent with his roles as an early-stage investor and a partner (and now CEO) of YC for over a decade. Just a couple of weeks ago he hosted the Little Tech Competition Summit [4] in DC, featuring speakers from different sides and parts of government. One of the most notable speeches was by Cory Booker, who talked at length about the importance of making entrepreneurship accessible to people of all socioeconomic backgrounds, which is a cause Garry deeply supports, given his own life experience.
> Of course, YC is more than its current CEO and hopefully this doesn't affect the moderation of this website :)
Exactly :)
If we were making moderation decisions to serve individuals or agendas that supposedly our “salary depends on”, we'd tie ourselves in knots.
Our job is to keep HN a great place for intellectual curiosity.
[1] https://www.forbes.com.au/covers/innovation/y-combinator-sta...
[2] https://x.com/paulg/status/1758191829491859607
[3] https://x.com/search?q=from%3Agarrytan%20democrat&src=typed_...
Can you elaborate on that?
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
It's also the core principle of HN, as stated at the beginning of the guidelines:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Feel free to ask any further questions not answered in the links above!
Sure, I'll just ask directly:
Q: Do you know of any experiments of psychological or sociological nature ran on the HN platform or its participants?
Q: If you knew that such experiments take place, would you be able to confirm it publicly?
Edit: why this question, by the way?
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
The expression "intellectual curiosity" grabbed my attention. Whatever is happening is definitely curious from an intellectual point of view, but it feels weird.
We’re (always) trying to get better at finding and penalizing bad comments – but not everyone agrees on what constitutes a “bad” comment.
Everyone is welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com if they see any story or comment that seems off, and we’re happy to investigate or explain anything.