If anyone is reading from YC, I'm happy to review their submissions, I was perhaps the first who raised concerns and was on top of the thread with my comment.
I haven't read the details or watched the video, but it does sound like you noticed something that should not have been there.
I noticed that your page says this:
> New: the thread "Tell HN: Y Combinator backing AI company to abuse factory workers" on Hacker News got removed from the front page despite having 242 points.
The thread fell in rank because it set off a software penalty called the flamewar detector. We haven't taken any moderator action or touched it in any way. Our usual practice is to downweight shallow outrage posts (because they're not what the site is for), but we haven't done so in this case, because we have a core rule of moderating less, not more, when YC or a YC startup is in a story. (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...)
If you want to be fair, you could add that information. Otherwise, readers will assume you mean that we nefariously censor negative posts about YC, when the truth is the opposite.
Edit: after I posted this, I noticed that the thread said [flagged] at the top. That's because users flagged it—as they usually do with shallow outrage threads. However, I've turned the flags off in keeping with the rule I just mentioned.
> If you want to be fair, you could add that information. Otherwise, readers will assume you mean that we nefariously censor negative posts about YC, when the truth is the opposite.
I'll do that, sure! Dang, I have deep respect for both you and HN for many-many reasons (HN literally changed my life and made it 1000x). So don't take this as me having a grudge. I just like accountability.
> but it does sound like you noticed something that should not have been there.
Thanks! I appreciate the kind reply—a nice change from how these things usually go. And I'm grateful to hear that you feel that way about HN. (What you say about how it changed your life is true in my case too, which is one reason why I'm doing this job.)
> I don't follow this, sorry.
Oh, I just meant that it sounds like you spotted something (the video in this case, I assume) that should not have been on an official YC launch page. I was being careful with my wording because I haven't looked at any of the details and haven't myself seen the video—I'm only going by the reactions that people are having to it.
(See this post I made on LinkedIn about this: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/crufter_today-y-combinator-de...)