The reputation economy is turning us into conformists (2017) [video]

/shownew and /show are clearly explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html ("Every Show HN appears on shownew. Once it clears a small points threshold, it will appear on the show page in the top bar.") and https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html ("All submissions appear on newest, and all Show HNs on shownew, but there is a small points threshold before a post appears on ask or show.")

The stuff you're saying about how YC works is not only made-up, it's the opposite of the truth. YC often funds competitors to existing YC startups—first because if you're funding 1000 startups a year, that's inevitable; and second because startups don't usually die because of competition, as PG and YC have been explaining to founders for many years. A startup that's building something people want will almost always find a way to differentiate itself.

We don't moderate Show HNs to favor YC startups or disfavor other startups. We do give YC startups the chance to post Launch HNs that get placed on HN's front page (as explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html). But these don't go on the /show tab (they used to, but I disabled that so YC startups wouldn't get too much of an extra advantage). Plenty of Show HNs make the front page, and the overwhelming majority have no connection to YC—in fact, I can't fathom how you'd have thought otherwise, since this seems quite obvious.

When a non-YC startup is having a successful Show HN, I often help them and also encourage them to apply to YC. When a non-YC startup posts a Show HN that isn't successful, I often email them with suggestions about how to rework it so the community will like it better, and if they do that, I often put their Show HN in the second-chance pool (https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308), so it gets a random placement on HN's front page.

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28810941 I gather that you're upset about something that happened to a specific Show HN. Rather than jumping to false conclusions about what happened, you should post the link so that (a) we can look into it and respond, and (b) readers can make up their minds for themselves. Since the comments you're posting contain no specific information, the more you post dramatic claims, the less likely readers are to believe you.

There could be a ton of reasons why your friend's Show HN got demoted, ranging from setting off the flamewar detector, the voting ring detector, getting flagged by users for some reason, getting downweighted because it broke the Show HN guidelines, getting downweighted because it broke the HN guidelines, various kinds of spam or abuse behavior (the worst of which is buying upvotes from spammers, which people unfortunately do but which typically causes their post to get buried immediately, and their account and site banned on HN). I'd need a link to say for sure which of those, if any, it was. Or maybe it just didn't get enough upvotes to clear the hurdle from /shownew to /show. That often happens. It happens to YC startups too.

If your friend(s) didn't do anything bad, you or they should email us so we can look at the post and possibly help. That's what people do when they assume good faith, and that approach has a much higher expected value than the approach you've been taking with these comments. You/they should do that out of simple self-interest if nothing else. Even when people did do something bad, we usually forgive and unban them if they take responsibility for it and promise not to do it again.

Not only do we not lie to the community, we try never to do anything that isn't clearly defensible to the community. To do otherwise would be not only wrong but stupid, since it would risk losing the good faith of HN users. Why would we do that? That's the only value HN has. It's precisely by not doing it that we can keep HN in the high esteem of this audience, and therefore keep YC in a kind of special relationship with users here. That's what makes HN valuable to YC (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...).

I've responded more here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28817887.

Dave Chappelle, with his recent $8-figure deal with a prominent pop-culture/FAANG company, who keep publishing and promoting his specials, seems like he's actually a counter-argument to your point.

To your second question, where am I "saying that like it's some innocuous thing that anyone would do"? And what does it matter?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

They definitely could, it just didn't matter because people spoke up anyway.

Legally, they would be "Ordner"[1], and are thereby "authorized". It is perfectly legal for organizers of "assemblies" to recruit and use volunteers to keep order and peace, as long as these volunteers are unarmed (by law). The Gewerbeordnung does not come into play here. I am not quite sure they were up to snuff when it comes to identification, tho, as legally they have to wear a white armband saying "Ordner", and I do not think they did when I saw them (they did however have those t-shirts and other swag if memory serves right). But I might be wrong.

I am sure some people, maybe even the CCC president, were offended by Vincent's websites - to be offensive is a goal Vincent stated himself - and the CCC leadership then decided to ban him. We may debate if this was justified or free speech or whatever, but at the end of the day, the organizer of the Congress told him to fuck off. There might have been misunderstandings along the way, and/or the CCC may have changed their initial decision and/or fucked up their communication (they are human, after all). But the end result was a ban from the venue.

As I said in another comment, I find the assault of Vincent that then occurred extremely problematic, probably outright illegal assault (I see no evidence of justified self-defense by the security in the video). At the same time, I respect the CCC's decision to ban an "undesirable". The club members have to figure out for themselves who they want at their events and in their spaces.

And as I also said earlier, I find the lack of accountability of the security "crew" very disconcerting. You cannot have people running around playing police (their Congress-internal DECT phone number even is "110", same as the police has in the public telephone network) who beat up people and cover their faces to hide their identities, all the while the CCC which these security people represent runs campaigns to get laws changed to make police more accountable by having officers to clearly be identifiable (by a number on their uniforms), wearing bodycams and raising the limits on when police is allowed to use force.

[1] https://dejure.org/gesetze/VersG/9.html

Sure! I don't believe anybody can object to these historical claims.

The problem is as old as satire itself: if the only people listening to your jokes are the ones who genuinely believe the positions you're lampooning, you're no longer the comedian. You're now either a fool or a willful pundit among fools.

Shakespeare is deeply funny because he knew his audience was overwhelmingly poor & common Londoners; people aware of England's class system receptive to irreverent treatments of nobility. "Get thee to a nunnery" is funny because the commoners are laughing at the portrayed impurity of the nobility; it's transgressive.

4chan's humor is transgressive, and I love it. But vc's claim to continuity with that tradition doesn't bear scrutiny: scrape away the thin layer of racist language, and there's no wit or insight. That's why only racists find it funny, and why vc finds himself in the company of & doing the work of fools.

So many before them, were to take the throne for all eternity, the japanese, the koreans and then they all became just another part of a connected world and on the throne remained, he who could in-cooperate change the fastest and most efficient.

They probably have the benefit of keeping their thoughts to themselves more often. These conservatives tend to live in rural areas where there is more likely to be people like themselves. It makes it easier to not have to express their views. Of course people like Trump have make the extremists of the right more comfortable in coming out and expressing their views.

This is just a guess.

>The conservatives I had known, didn't talk about tolerance, but they certainly practiced it when a dissenting opinion was expressed.

We have to consider the circumstances that have led up to the cancel culture in the US. The left has no real power, they haven't had it for decades and at the very least not in my lifetime (1988). The best representation the left has is corporatists (Democrats) who protect the owner class at all costs and "try" to throw meaningless crumbs at their base in terms of social progress to pretend like we aren't slipping backwards(ie. electing a black woman as VP despite her abysmal polling, kneeling in Kente cloth, painting "Black Lives Matter" in giant letters on the street in front of the White House, etc.)

Well the left lost out during the Bush years. Progress seemed to be made in the direction of what the Right wanted and the left lost ground or didn't move forward depending on the issue.

Fair enough, then Obama comes around and what does the Left get? More crumbs in the form of "social progress" while meaningful reform is left out both socially and economically. We had a win in terms of Gay rights but that was decades of fighting and only after it was politically expedient for him towards the end of his presidency (he was against gay marriage going into his presidency). All of this culminates in Trump getting elected and immediately pulling the country even further Right and undoing most of the crumbs from the Obama years.

When the Left has been powerless for decades and with no other avenue to turn to do you really have any surprise that once they discovered the power of "Cancel culture" that they would use it? What else do they have to push back against the Right and at least "try" to enact meaningful reform?

In addition to this, I am always annoyed at attitudes like what you express. I have seen this behavior from all the right wing personalities (Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro etc.). They always give the benefit of the doubt to when something controversial happens on the right but the left is scrutinized to unbelievable levels and under a microscope in every direction. The most recent stunt is them promoting a tiktok channel called "libs of tiktok" where they collect the most extreme ramblings of random people they don't like and parrot it as representative of the whole Left.

It is complete Revisionist history. Conservatives invented identity politics. It is called Slavery. Its not like Africans decided to come to the US so that 100+ years later they knew they could cancel people. These people were murdered, raped, forced into slavery and now when the left tries to push back in whatever powerless way they can, right wingers are all "I can't believe you are playing identity politics".

Contemporary Pope would probably be horrified if someone suggested to him to initiate a crusade against the unbelievers. The combination of Christianity and politics has shifted over time, there is much less hard force and much more sentimentality involved.

But that does not mean that Crusaders weren't true Christians while Francis I. is, or vice versa.

The traditional left is gone because its proponents died out, but before they died, they introduced the young wokesters into their parties. The shift from blue collar workers to academia took decades to complete and there is a clear continuity in the process. So I think the label still fits, only the relevant institutions changed their priorities.