Vercel CEO meets with Netanyahu to discuss AI education

I was so confused, I thought vercel had an outage. This makes more sense now.

I got 3 different calls from some people today about Vercel and switching off of it, couldn't figure out why - they were spending upwards of 5k-10k/mo.

I am confused about how this photo exists. If I were a CEO, regardless of my politics, the last thing I would do would be to post a photo with somebody that controversial. It's a situation that one can only lose from: one side might feel mildly positive about it, the other side will hate your guts. And the side that hates this guy is surely a much larger portion of Vercel's customer base. It doesn't take a genius to gauge public perception of a world figure in your key market (US & other western countries).

They need a publicist, bad, to control this guy.

Because many people don't think that murder is a bad thing. If it's done in the name of one's God, or to clear away an existing culture or people to make way for one who has been taught to believe they are superior to others, special, or deserving in some way.

People like to act like this has never happened before, but the fact is it happens all the time throughout history. We like to think we are evolved past that, but we are not and unlikely to ever be at this point. The true nature of man is destructive, selfish, xenophobic and cruel.

After Israel is done with Gaza, we'll create some holiday that has children dressing up as Palestinians for first grade theater. Palestinians will become like Native Americans: scarce and marginalized. Because of the religious, ethnic and racial homogeneity of the Israeli people, its likely to be far worse than what settlers did to the Native population at the time.

Most people just don't care. If more did, it wouldn't be happening in the first place. Or at least those who are in power don't care and see human life as disposable.

there are 15m palestinians.

20% of Israeli population (~2m) are palestinians. how do you factor this into "religious, ethnic and racial homogeneity of the Israeli".

Apartheid definition. Palestinians don't have the same rights even if they're native to the land.

No that's not what I meant. I'm not talking about the actual conflict or how it works. That's political discussion. My comment was specifically about the action of him posting the photo from a public relations perspective.

There is a controversial world event. Regardless of which side you're on, everybody agrees that there are many people with strong opposing views. As a representative of a company, he should have stayed away from the topic as a whole, because getting involved with it is a PR nightmare with essentially zero upside.

Not everyone puts the bottom line first, even among CEOs. In fact it's incredibly normal not to.

So what would you say the Vercel CEO is putting first here since this is clearly causing massive brand damage.

Well, presumably he's a massive fan of Israel's current administration and thinks everyone who disagrees can stop being customers and also pound sand. Either that or he's completely lost the plot.

LOL, unless that guy/the group like that guy can bring much more money than the customers/people hate it.

It might very well be the case. Vercel might have increasingly tougher time reselling AWS to small customers. So chance to resell AWS AI to countries might be great new market.

Billionaires and ethnonationalist supremacists share a belief that they are "special" and entitled to do whatever they want because they are "better" and "more deserving". Doesn't matter the time period or the faction: European colonial invaders/separatists, Nazis, or Likud because almost every ideology based on supremacy tends to lead to war, repression, suffering, and/or mass death.

[flagged]

A gotcha photo? He posted it himself..

Exactly, Netanyahu is contentious on BOTH sides of the political aisle. You're advertising to an ever decreasing spectrum of the right. Beyond the moral objections over this, I'm just confused how this happened from a PR perspective.

As an Argentinian, Israel/Netanyahu are generally well received (because of many people with Jewish heritage) by people in the center/right, even people in the left spectrum will be reticent about criticizing if they come from a Jewish family. The echo chamber is very real if you only watch right-leaning TV channels for example (most of them).

Pure speculation from now on, but afaik Guillermo lives in the USA, and as the CEO of an international company I'm also surprised he's so tone deaf but it's not the only example (i.e. check Galperin's Twitter feed). I don't think it's about sending a message I think Guillermo probably follows Argentinian media/politics and fell for the echo chamber, he also wanted to look cool/important for Milei.

And he probably doesn't think the Elon Musk's hail Hitler gestures were a stupid move.

Are we going with "controversial" now to describe genocidal dictators?

The image he's minted is at best: he's a total effing tool, at worst: he's an ethnonationalist supremacist. Either way reeks of unstable stupidity.

It's not the first time. Check this out https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nursahketene_ive-decided-to-m...

It's been a thing for a while, he just gradually became louder and more brave about it as it became more and more accepted to be public about it (see DHH, Garry Tan, Palantir, etc). A lot of smart people inside Vercel saw the writing on the wall and left.

Wait, sorry - what’s the controversy regarding DHH? Others don’t surprise me.

Several recent attempts at hard forking rails, https://tekin.co.uk/2025/09/the-ruby-community-has-a-dhh-pro...

Due to just the most recent DHH tirade, but a similarly long trend as with Guillermo: https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64

Wow, I missed that one. That is a truly bizarre post.

There’s supporting Netanyahu.

Then there’s taking a selfie with Netanyahu.

Then there’s posting said selfie for the world to know.

What the f man.

replit are looking support some of the customers looking to leave[0]. Also, looks like they just raised a new round?[1]

[0] https://x.com/amasad/status/1972805067771355518

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-30/vercel-no...

Why was this post removed from the front page?

Multiple reports will automatically drop it from the usual list, unless there’s manual intervention to keep it from brigading attempts

I don’t buy it. It’s like a simple if statement. If Israel || Gaza || Nyetawhaterver then canFlag = false.

It has happened so so so many times, it’s naive at this point to believe the mod has no influence

It’s ridiculous that the biggest story on tech this minute has only 130 comments after 24 hours.

> yo I spoke to Netanyahu about AI, empowering everyone and our free societies

Make it make sense.

Doublespeak

AI will help people harden and rationalize their cognitive dissonance to ignore millions of civilians being deliberately starved mere miles away on purpose by sweeping it under the rug to instead discuss the weather and random technology flavor-of-the-day. It's so tonedeaf that clanging pots and pans in front of their faces has no effect.

What are good places to migrate projects with similar DX? Netlify? Cloudflare?

Replit has a migration tool right now

I've been happy with both Render and fly.io

For those without X accounts who want to read replies (as of now, anyway):

https://nitter.net/rauchg/status/1972669025525158031

You can be an incredible entrepreneur(or anything really) and a terrible human being. Please remember this before idolising people outright solely because of their achievements.

Yep.

Examples:

"The International Jew" - Henry Ford, BFF with Adolf Hitler.

Musk "Roman Salutes" more-or-less prove he wasn't able to overcome South Africa's apartheid hate ideology.

Hans Reiser - convicted murderer

Kip Macy & Nicole Macy - landlords from hell

Martin Shkreli - (no introduction necessary)

Impact and moral reputation/integrity are mostly orthogonal properties. It's the responsibility of decent people to rightly boycott crooks, warmongers, pedophiles, and ethno-nationalist suprematists. When this corrective moderation breaks-down, society is in deep shit.

It’s time to switch off Vercel…

How to destroy your business with one post:

Time to switch to SST: https://sst.dev/

Folks, this is an indicted war criminal, who is committing an internationally recognized genocide. And Vercel CEO is shaking his hand and supporting him.

I feel like I'm losing my mind here.

He knows.. he just didn’t care. You should treat him and treat his company accordingly.

Time to delete my account...

Why was this flagged?

I am curious what it would have been like if social media existed back when Hitler was in power.

Do these people really think they will get away unscathed at this point in a few years?

"Hey remember that time you met with that guy that was running a genocide?"

People are trying to distance themselves from Epstein, saying they didn't know what he did. It ain't working and this is way worse.

ok time to switch to Replit

Why is this flagged?

absolutely disgusting

# Analysis: Political Moderation on Hacker News

## Executive Summary

This analysis demonstrates that Hacker News's (Y Combinator) official "no politics" policy actually constitutes a political choice that selectively structures which geopolitical topics can be discussed from a technological angle.

---

## 1. HN's Official Policy

### Stated Rules - Most political, crime, or celebrity-related topics are considered "off-topic" - Exception: if they constitute "evidence of a new interesting phenomenon" - Declared focus: "what satisfies intellectual curiosity" in tech and startups - In 2016: organized a "political detox week" explicitly recognizing that "political conflicts cause harm here"

### Justification Avoid flamewars and maintain a constructive discussion space centered on technology.

---

## 2. Selective Application: Ukraine vs Gaza Case

### Ukraine (2022-2025): Significant Coverage

*Accepted and widely discussed topics:* - Ukraine's call to the hacker community (March 2022): major post, numerous comments - Cyberattacks and Russia-Ukraine cyber warfare - Hacktivism (Anonymous, etc.) - Technological infrastructure - Cybersecurity operations

*Implicit justification:* Clear and direct tech angle

### Gaza (2023-2025): Minimal Coverage

*Topics nearly absent despite obvious tech angle:* - Destruction of internet infrastructure in Gaza (rarely mentioned) - Military AI systems (see next section) - Impact on Palestinian tech workers - Vercel/Netanyahu controversy (tech CEO + Netanyahu)

*Result:* Even with obvious technical angles, low visibility or moderation

---

## 3. The Revealing Case: AI in Gaza

### Documented Israeli AI Systems

#### *"Lavender"* - *Function:* AI system listing tens of thousands of Palestinian men algorithmically identified as linked to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad - *Scale:* Approximately 37,000 Palestinians marked as suspected militants - *Use:* Target recommendations for strikes

#### *"The Gospel" (Habsora)* - *Function:* Rapid identification of combatants and equipment - *Official claim:* Reduces civilian casualties - *Use:* Target selection and prioritization

#### *"Where's Daddy?"* - *Function:* Determines when a target is at a specific location - *Documented use:* Target individuals when they are at home at night with their families

### Tech Relevance for HN

These systems check *all the boxes* of popular HN topics: - Cutting-edge artificial intelligence - Machine learning and automated decision systems - AI ethics (recurring HN topic) - Mass surveillance and data science - Questions about war automation - Algorithmic transparency - AI system bias and errors

### Actual Presence on HN

- *Yes, there have been posts* (notably on Lavender in April 2024) - *But:* Limited visibility, restricted discussions - *Contrast:* Equivalent AI ethics topics elsewhere are widely debated

---

## 4. Other Examples of Selective Moderation

### Vercel Case (September 30, 2025)

*The facts:* - Vercel CEO (Guillermo Rauch) posts selfie with Benjamin Netanyahu - Private meeting on AI in New York - Consequences: employee resignations, client contract cancellations ($5,000-10,000/month)

*HN Relevance:* - Major company in dev ecosystem (Next.js, hosting) - Direct business impact on community - Questions about political engagement of tech CEOs - Documented economic consequences

*Result:* Limited or moderated discussions on HN

---

## 5. The Political Paradox of "No Politics"

### The Thesis

*"No politics" is itself a political position* that:

1. *Normalizes certain conflicts* (Ukraine = legitimate to discuss from tech angle) 2. *Marginalizes other conflicts* (Gaza = not legitimate even with obvious tech angle) 3. *Determines which violence is "tech"* and which is not 4. *Structures the field of the thinkable* in the tech community

### The Consequences

*What is made visible:* - Nation-state cyber warfare (if adversary = Russia) - AI ethics (except specific military applications) - Digital freedoms (Western context)

*What is made invisible:* - Actual use of AI for automated warfare - Impact of tech choices on civilian populations (non-Western context) - Responsibility of tech actors in conflicts

### The Structural Effect

By excluding Gaza under the pretext of "neutrality," HN: - Prevents the tech community from debating the actual use of its tools - Creates a blind spot on applied AI ethics - Implicitly privileges certain geopolitical narratives

---

## 6. Conclusion

### The Fundamental Contradiction

Hacker News claims to be "apolitical" while making editorial choices that: 1. Favor certain geopolitical angles 2. Marginalize other equally technically relevant angles 3. Prevent crucial ethical discussions about technology use

### The Irony

AI systems like Lavender, Gospel, and "Where's Daddy?" represent exactly the type of topic HN should cover intensively: - Automation of life-or-death decisions - Algorithmic transparency - AI system bias - Developer responsibility

Yet these topics remain in moderation's blind spot.

### The Central Question

*Can we really separate "tech" and "politics" when technology itself has direct political consequences?*

HN moderation implicitly answers: yes, but only for certain geopolitical contexts.

---

## Sources and Dates

- HN moderation policy: 2016 (political detox week) - Ukraine call to hackers: March 2022 - Lavender revelations: April 2024 (existing but limited HN posts) - Vercel/Netanyahu affair: September 30, 2025 - Date of this analysis: October 2025

---

## Methodological Note

This analysis is based on: - Web research on HN coverage of different conflicts - Documentation of Israeli military AI systems - Comparison of topics with equivalent tech relevance - Observation of moderation patterns

*Limitation:* Impossibility to precisely quantify the number of deleted vs accepted posts (moderation data not public)

I was looking for more reasons not to use the piece of flaming garbage that Next has become since Vercel made it great again. I didn't expect actively supporting + making a selfie with war criminal and genocider Netanyahu would be my extra reason not to use Next, but here we are.

This candid photo literally says the opposite. Best case scenario they shook hands and his team just sneaked a photo.

But was it worth it? To burn all good will any upside to generating controversy?

Flagged because HN moderators also choose their side. Gaza is the moral test of our era.

Moderators didn't flag it; users did. It also set off the flamewar detector. I've turned off the flags now.

what about turning off ability of users to flag comments in such posts or limiting them to comments that get to -20 ?

because right now flags are abused to suppress opinions that people simply don't agree with or to hide facts that counter to their worldview, even if they are backed with links to factual information.