I've known employers like this. I've worked for employers like this. Employers are already monitoring social media. Third party services are paid by employers to monitor for staff that might be looking at other jobs. Recruiters make it their mission to know who's looking and what employers are likely to need their services in the near future. This is much of why trust and discretion is the most important asset on both sides of hiring related activities.
Triplebyte burning down their reputation as a recruitment avenue is one thing. Locking job searchers into reputation and livelihood risks inside Triplebyte's own reputation dumpster fire, on the friday before a holiday weekend, during historic unemployment levels, in the middle of a fucking pandemic, is unforgivable. The CEO showing up in person with hamfisted gaslighting (seriously?) in the middle of this self made disaster makes me hope those comments don't get flagged out of future HN search results.
Triplebyte is a YC company and HN is a YC site, so economic interests are aligned with nuking highly critical comments
This is theoretically true, but the fact that it's been on the home page for 12 hours and has accumulated hundreds of critical comments, none of which any mod has touched, seems to (a) eliminate that possibility and (b) demonstrate that the risk is theoretical, not actual.
(Keep in mind that YC has thousands of investments, so whatever you think of their ethics or the incentives, a filter like this would be impractical and obvious. Also see "Not behaving in a way that damages the reputation of his/her company" on https://www.ycombinator.com/ethics/ - it's hard to imagine YC supporting this.)
To my surprise, it was back up near the top this morning with almost a thousand votes and hundreds of comments. TripleByte may have chosen to burn their reputation irreparably, but I have gained a lot of faith in YC and the mods here.
That raises the obvious question of why we have such software if it causes such problems, but the answer is simply that it helps more than it hurts, overall.
Meta threads and discussions tend to invite objections from the litigious type of user. Such users are rarely satisfied, but have a ton of energy for meta argument, so it's easy to get into a situation where any answer you give leads to two or three fresh objections. Such objections have to be answered with great care, because if you slip up and say the wrong thing, people will use it to drum up a scandal (edit: and will quote it against you for years to come!). This consumes a lot of mental and emotional energy. (Edit: btw, this is asymmetrical: the people raising objections and making accusations are under no such restriction. They can say anything without downside, no matter how false it is or what they accuse you of. They can make things up with impunity and people will believe them by default, because on the internet you are guilty until proven innocent, plus everyone loves the underdog. These are additional reasons why it's easy to end up in a situation where every comment you spend an hour painstakingly composing earns you a bunch more counterarguments and demands.) These arguments tend to be repetitive, so you find yourself having to say the same things and defend against the same attacks and false accusations over and over. This is discouraging, and there's a high risk of burnout. Disgruntled users are a tiny minority, but there are more than enough of them to overwhelm our limited resources—it ends up being something like a DoS attack.
I fear this outcome, so we've always shied away from adding such a system. We want to be transparent, and we answer whatever questions people ask, but it feels safer to do it ad hoc as questions come up. There's no specific question you can't get an answer to, other than a few special cases like how HN's anti-abuse software works.
There's an opportunity cost issue too. The vast majority of the community is pretty happy with how we do things—I know that because if they weren't, we'd never hear the end of it, and then we'd say sorry and readjust until they were. I think it makes more sense to do things to keep the bulk of the community happy, or make them happier, than to pour potentially all our resources into placating a small minority—especially since, once you've done this job for a while (say, a week) you know that nothing you do will ever be completely right or please everyone.
On the other hand, if I could ever be persuaded that a full moderation log would satisfy everyone's curiosity and reduce the overhead of misinterpretation, complaints, imagined malfeasance, etc., then we'd be happy to do it.
This question has come up repeatedly, so if you're curious to read previous answers, see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
I agree with you that any community faces the problem of a vocal, critical, and nearly insurgent minority. They seek to identify contradictions in your logic with the predominantly self-interested goal of demonstrating intellectual superiority rather than finding genuine solutions. I can understand the emotional burden of continually sparring with such individuals. You can't please everyone.
In contrast, there is the silent majority. By virtue of their silence, it would appear they condone current management of the site. I am not sure this can be assumed.
First, it is generally the "first movers" of a given activity who are both the first to try it, but also the first to defect. For example, there are people who are passionate about Microsoft or Apple products and review them publicly. When they stop reviewing these products, it is indicative of a lack of passion; they have moved on. The majority soon follows, just like they did when the first movers initially promoted the activity. In this way, the first mover is the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Are HN's vocal critics really first movers? The ones who are thoughtful, at least, are certainly among the most passionate and engaged; losing them would be the canary. (Admittedly, you must be able to discern those who are vocal and thoughtful from those who are vocal and thoughtless, but I am confident you have that capacity.)
Second, there is the issue of the 90-9-1 rule. The vast majority of users of HN never comment nor express their opinion; they simply observe. This will be true whether or not they are satisfied with the service. If they are dissatisfied, they don't comment, they simply leave. On the other hand, composing only 10%, the vocal minority must necessarily be the minority. Can we uniformly dismiss this vocal minority as unrepresentative of the silent majority? No, because there is no other proxy for surveying the majority. (Again, you must discern the productive from the unproductive critics.)
Finally, there is the burden of simply engaging. I am amazed by the amount of time and effort you must invest into moderating HN and in writing your responses (among, I'm sure, numerous other activities such as actually writing code). It appears that recapitulating your justifications over and over again is not particularly efficient.
That, however, does not imply that failing to justify your actions is suddenly an adequate substitute. It simply means that the current method is inefficient.
There are a few conclusions I think we can draw from this. We can't dismiss the vocal minority because it's all we have; rather, we must discern those who are constructive from those who are destructive. Further, like blowing onto a flame to put it out, ignoring or suppressing them will likely instigate even more frenzied conspiracizing. Finally, responding to each of them individually is inefficient and burdensome.
I think a basic ledger of "moderator actions" would solve many of these issues. To start, it would probably not be an exhaustive log, but simply actions performed at the thread-level rather than the comment-level. It is transparent, just like your comments and the HN community guidelines already are. It would broaden understanding of your actions, rather than rely on users to dig through your recent comments (the only ledger thus far, without which they undoubtedly draw their own conclusions). Finally, it would reduce the burden on you.
Would it, however, pacify the vocal minority? Would they conspiracize further? Would they levy more demands to change the site?
Perhaps, perhaps not.
But it seems clear that those who are worth listening to, vocal as they may be, are in fact worth listening to. They are the canaries. And if they increasingly demand more transparency (which you would know, not I), that is likely worth making some steps toward satisfying. If they make more demands, so be it.
Communities change over time, especially as a function of scale, and I think HN is no different. The only thing that generally must be kept constant is prudent stewardship, and I am fairly confident your track record satisfies that. There may be mistakes along the way, but as long as you make a transparent, genuine effort to serve the community (as you clearly have done historically), that will go along way in retaining the trust of the community.