Y Combinator entrepreneurs say they were kicked out of the accelerator | Hacker News Reader

Y Combinator entrepreneurs say they were kicked out of the accelerator

businessinsider.com

70 pointskordlessagain22 comments

Oh jeez, here we go again. Yesterday’s thread about it was pretty clear. Now there’s a one sided article about it on BI. It’s almost like they don’t care and just want the click-bait and traffic.

I was busy yesterday. I request a link to yesterday's thread!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27399581

The acccused and the accuser both tweeted extensively about this, but only one side is covered in the article. Great journalism.

The article says YC declined to comment.

I’m not talking about YC I’m talking about the person accused of lying to get the vaccine. They claimed the accusation is false and explained why. The article fails to mention that despite the fact they sourced the accusation from the same place the defense was (Twitter.) It’s selective reporting without a doubt, but I won’t guess a motive. intent, or cause.

Because the problem being raised isn’t whether the “accused” was correct, or the “accuser” was correct.

The problem being raised is that the mere act of making an accusation is sufficient to kick someone out of Ycombinator.

What I find baffling is that PG is so against cancel culture. Approx. 1 in 10 of his tweets are railing against this phenomenon. Yet in the YC community cancel culture is permitted. Admittedly they are not one and the same (YC and PG) but it does undermine the credibility of the organization to go against on of its founder's principles.

Speech in and of itself isn’t what I’d imagine is the argument for getting the boot, it’s posting something publicly that will inevitably direct an internet mob onto or cause the media to dox and slander a founder in YC. This is particularly unethical where it seems fairly debatable if the accusation is true, or even that the grounds of the accusation (the ethics involved) are objective.

Posting comments on the internet can be a high risk activity - which is my cat memes are so popular - it is not the right medium for a) bragging about unethical behavior or b) denouncing others. I understand the freedom of speech arguments but this comes from a time when there was no broadcast media and no permanent public record of what you said.

No the problem is they in bad faith went public on Twitter about their colleagues. It’s pretty clear from the original thread that this wasn’t merited. I know I wouldn’t want people like that in my YC class, and I especially wouldn’t if I were an investor.

Business Insider really is a digital tabloid that would rely on any headline for clicks. Wouldn't trust this source.

It's baffling to me what goes viral. This spat gets people talking but the DreamWorld scandal doesn't?

What is the DreamWorld scandal?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26898266

(I had not seen this before, just the result of a search). It looks like it did get quite a bit of discussion

Previously discussed over a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26898266

Seems to be little more than an overly ambitious, moderately sized Kickstarter where the creators can't deliver. Only wrinkle is the fact that it's a YC company. It's a stretch to call it a scandal.

There’s a long running joke in the gamedev community about 12 year olds showing up and asking how to create their dream MMO. DreamWorld is what would happen if those 12 year olds got into YCombinator and ran a successful Kickstarter.

There was a thread the other day. It went easier on them than I just did.

There's allegations there was nepotism involved in YC approving an obviously garbage proposal.

Paul doesn't seem like a good person.

YC is not some magic fantasy organization. Like any other org you should probably discuss things your upset about internally with relevant stakeholders before complaining on Twitter. That said telling other people how to circumvent vaccine queues is clearly unethical and someone high up should have loudly squashed that immediately.

> someone high up should have loudly squashed that immediately

Both the posts about this were promptly removed by YC staff. (And I've just tried searching for any posts with vaccination advice, and there are none whatsoever.)

At least one of the posts didn't seem to be unethical (no lies were being told or rules being broken – though I don't know for sure, I don't live in the US and I haven't read the post myself). But it was still removed by YC staff.

I posted this to see if it would get upvoted. I was a bit surprised to come back and find it doing well, but not surprised it got flagged.

Did you know karma here is < 1/2 of the votes up on a submission, but downvotes on a comment seem to count about 1 to 1? At least I got some karma from it!

In regards to it being flagged, I suppose it's a questionable ethical practice to see the site flag an article about itself. I've made other self-interest related censorship observations here before and I guess the lesson is that those in control can do what they want, when they want.

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