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Comment by thomseddon | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone know why the link has changed from TNW (http://thenextweb.com/uk/2013/03/01/stripe-uk-europe-launch/) to TechCrunch?

It's not really important, just curious if this is some kind of mod preference for TC? :)

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Good question - I was the original submitter and didn't change it, so must have been one of the mod's. I preferred TNW's version as there is more context in it.

Also TNW had the story first - Mike Butcher was late on stage after Patrick's announcement because he was furiously writing up the story for TC :)

The plot thickens....

It seems to make more sense to post the TC article and let them "battle it out" with votes. With no justification what's been done here certainly does seem odd and, frankly, smacks of some kind of ulterior motive...

... That TC pays YC for promoting articles? Wouldn't be surprising given the ycombinator-centric posts. But it's also possible that mods think readers give more credence to TC.

I already thought editing titles was uncalled for, so seeing them edit links seems way over the line. Without any explanation, we can only guess at what the reasoning behind such edits are.

However, if mods are going to continue such aggressive edits, it would be really nice if they had to write a quick reason/summary of the edit, or at least show what changed. Since I doubt that will happen, I wish PG would at least add an "edited" label to stories that have been changed.

As things stand now, I no longer know which stories are actually community-approved and which have been silently placed there by the powers that be.

EDIT: Interesting that this thread is suddenly at the bottom of the page...

HN exists to serve PG and YC's goals. Plain and simple. And for all we know there may be a pay-to-play relationship between YC and TC.

Which is fine, but then that should be disclosed, not because they have to, but out of good faith. Most of the tech community, myself included, has high regards for PG and YC. If secret pay-to-play relationships exist, they erode that trust.

To be clear, I don't think that there are pay-to-play relationships between YC and TC, at least not any that would lead them to actively edit HN submissions to be from TC. However, a secret group of mods are leaving a bad taste in my mouth. I hope PG will take this opportunity to clear up exactly what the mods' roles are, and what permissions/oversight they have.

This thread has, without doubt, been pinned to the bottom ( it was sitting at the top a couple of hours ago and has received as many votes since then).

Editing the title is one thing (which I largely condone), editing a URL is another thing entirely and then to blatantly attempt to hide the discussion is boardering on outrageous! The HN "mod community" has gone well down in my estimations.

I thought for a long time that TC was paying YC for flow (always suspicious that of all the articles on a given topic, it's always the TC ones that make it to the top of the front page), and the actions of this story convinced me that there is truth to the claim.

Could be because TNW is a rag. Half their article is just plugging more of their own articles about a different company.

And TC is better? All these blogs do is repeat press releases/each other and link to more of their own articles. Mods shouldn't be deciding which tech blog is best especially when there was nothing wrong with the information in TNW.

I agree completely about the quality of these sites. I'm not saying TC (and definitely not AOL) are better. They are just better this time.

Shitty journalism should not be rewarded, so I find it hard to sympathize against the mods decision.

Changing titles is one thing but changing the URL to a different site seems a step too far.

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