HN Moderation of YC Criticism

The cluster revolves around debates on whether Hacker News censors or biases moderation against negative comments or stories about Y Combinator and its backed companies, with references to policies of lighter moderation to avoid perceived bias.

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Keywords

e.g CD MM growthhackers.com newsfaq.html CEO SSC FAQ NG YC yc hn companies combinator moderating ycombinator criticize seo startups comment

Sample Comments

1270018080 Mar 25, 2023 View on HN

Doesn't that go against the entire ethos of the YC community? Is this post going to stay up?

Joakal Aug 11, 2011 View on HN

Seems like YC is vulnerable to this. I wonder if YC settled and/or got gagged.

zogrodea Nov 28, 2023 View on HN

The moderators have said before that, when YC or YC-backed companies are spoken about, they have the principle of moderating less than they would for other posts to reduce chance of bias. So I think your suggestion would go against one of their other principles.

hermitcrab Feb 15, 2025 View on HN

Why has this been flagged? Does it touch a raw nerve for YCombinator?

chaostheory Jun 26, 2022 View on HN

No clue. You’re going to have to askhttps://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=beyonddI’m assuming that YC frowns on their funded companies doing unsavory things?

spockswrench Jan 8, 2025 View on HN

In the past haven’t you disabled flags on posts where YC has a vested interest? This is a big story with no HN post now.

oatmeal1 Jan 28, 2024 View on HN

Did this get unflagged? Saw this topic flagged a couple hours ago. I would hope HN has a policy not to censor negative information about YC.

dang Nov 21, 2022 View on HN

I have no knowledge about this particular case but that is absolutely not how YC operates or thinks about its business. I've never heard a single comment from anyone at YC along such lines. I'm not moderating this subthread the way we normally would*, but IMO you guys should be more scrupulous about posting snarky smears.* because <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20%22less%2C%20not%20more%22&

avaer Dec 21, 2025 View on HN

One long-standing code is that they moderate YC companies less on HN, allowing criticisms like yours to stand: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34320816To HN's credit I haven't seen this rule violated.For example I wouldn't have known it was a YC company if not for your comment.

0des Apr 23, 2022 View on HN

Bad look to be silencing negative opinions about YC backed companies. Seeing this more and more lately, and am assuming my comment noting this will be gone soon too.