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Comment by smcl | Hacker News Reader

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smcl

Flagged!? Come on this is extremely topical, I cannot think of a more on-topic thing for HN. It brings together:

- Silicon Valley

- Startups

- Y Combinator

- Current Events

Any one of those is an appropriate submission for Hacker News but altogether, it’s just … there is nothing more appropriate for HN. This belongs at the top of the front page where I encountered it.

View on HN

I imagine some people flagged it so it doesn't get more views. How pathetic of YCombinator itself begging for a bailout.

I attempted to create a Tell HN thread talking about this but it almost instantly disappeared from new. I believe this is the moderation team, possibly they have been asked by someone higher up to not allow the discussion.

Keep in mind the above is only speculation, but since the moderators haven't taken a public stance on this or clarified anything it's what I'll believe for now.

This was my reason for flagging it.

The balls to even try this, I'm enraged and the last thing I want is them getting more eyes.

This truly shows the disconnect we are now living in.

They said the quiet part out loud.

Interesting, I thought it was the opposite - people attempting some kind of damage control since having a “Y Combinator is asking for a bailout” story on the front page is not a good look. But I guess the title was changed to be a little less incendiary

Not for me, personally.

This wasn't an article or blog post talking about the out-of-touch CEO-bros having the lack of self-awareness to even attempt to have us bail them out.

This was a direct link to their 'petition'.

We've gone beyond moral hazard, we are now at the point where it's expected for tax-payers and poor people to bail out the rich when their greed finally catches up with them.

Right but when I commented the headline was literally “Y Combinator is asking for a bailout”

I definitely understand why you flagged it though, it just didn’t occur to me when I commented

This community is so respectful, insightful and generous that I almost forgot it had nefarious overlords over regular overlords.

Shame on you. This is a moment to remember.

Let's just bring back ol regular forums with just regular overlords (and pay them and place them on rotation).

It's well into the AM here but tomorrow I will spend a little time installing/building a little forum at this address: Oslo.eu.org

See you there, if you want.

the forum is up. due to an attack, I had to block US IPs.

Hey man, they own the place so it is their rules. Do you think the speech is free here? Newspeak only.

Right but the link itself isn’t critical of HN or anything, just some of the comments turned out not to be super on board with the petition.

My speech gets rate limited under the guise of "posting too fast" here from time to time. For YC that and flagging are a feature being used to control the narrative and as a user it sucks because you can't in general have a conversation about anything remotely confrontational. Same thing happens at Twitter despite the new boss. Rules more thee but not for me.

So I agree with you in general. But in my opinion YC doesn't want the petition on the front page probably because they don't want to have to explain the comments to Congress or the press. Imagine asking for a bailout and having the comments here read out loud in a hearing. It's just not a good look. But you know what else isn't a good look? That this post was flagged, edited and restricted.

> But in my opinion YC doesn't want the petition on the front page probably because they don't want to have to explain the comments to Congress

In my opinion they probably didn't want it on the front page with that title ("Y Combinator is asking for a bailout") because it looked desperate. I don't think that's why it disappeared though. Apparently some others didn't want it on the front page with the revised title ("Urgent: Sign the petition now") because they didn't like the idea that YC would get some special treatment (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35115948).

Weird story altogether, and some people who would actually otherwise be aligned ended up doing a bit of friendly fire.

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