zlacker

Besides the "block anyone remotely progressive" approach to social media (including industry folks like Anil Dash [1]) - he seems extremely uncivil and rude [2]. And Sam Altman has explicitly referenced his politics as a reason for this decision [3].

This gives me the impression that there's a specific political agenda being advanced at YC ...

[1] https://twitter.com/anildash/status/1564285359755874304?s=20...

[2] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FH6Y9DCUYAEkV1p?format=png&name=...

[3] https://twitter.com/sama/status/1564256798323851265

edit: deleted a not very clear link about certain politically charged individuals.

>>12_thr+(OP)
So, why the downvotes? We're not allowed to talk about this?

>>12_thr+k1
(Edit: the GP comment was edited after I wrote this - more about that below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32642696.)

Hardened political rhetoric and seasoned talking points aren't on topic here (regardless of which way the political vector is pointing). If you check out the site guidelines, it should be clear why: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

You don't have to agree with anyone's views but this style of argument is deathly to the curious conversation we want here. Curious conversation requires, among other things, respect across differences—wanting to learn more about how someone thinks, and why they think that way, and trusting that they have good reasons for all that even if, in the end, they're wrong. And, of course, you and your views deserve the same consideration.

If you want to argue against someone's views here (Garry's or anyone else's), you'll get much further by making your substantive points thoughtfully. We're trying to avoid the online callout/shaming culture here, at least to the extent possible on the open internet.

The culture of political attack goes very much the other way, of course—people save screenshots of the worst things they can find, bring them up at every opportunity, and so on. Guilt by association is another common tactic. None of this helps us really understand each other—anyone can be made to look bad that way, so it really doesn't have much persuasive power. It does get one's own side riled up (in a yay way) and the opposing side riled up (in a boo way), but riler-uppers are what we're trying to avoid on HN, because they destroy the curious conversation I was just talking about.

(I hope it's clear that all of the above should and does apply equally to opposing political sides.)

>>dang+p1
What is the difference between "shaming" and "referencing facts", exactly? I genuinely don't understand the distinction. Also, I'm commenting on YC's choice, not Garry's views. I understand if YC doesn't want to host criticism of its decisions, but you should be upfront about it.

I explicit reject this idea that it's unfair to point to things people have said, even if they're screenshots. Sorry, that's just deciding that you can pick and choose data to ignore.

>>12_thr+k1
Kinda wondering what his beef with Hamasaki was that prompted "Resign you piece of shit". Seems like this was a Board of Education person, was he that bad, like poisoning the kids school lunches?

edit: sorry I realise that I may asking some stupid questions that everyone knows already. But to me Garry Tan was just the Posterous guy. I'm just a bit floored to hear that there's more to this and I'm trying to find my bearings. Seeing the name Andy Ngo is a massive red flag to me, but I can't really parse what was being said in the tweet.

>>dang+p1
Out of curiosity, why don't you make "YC churn" announcements read-only, like job ads are?

There's not really much curious conversation when they happen, and not really a huge chance of it, either. As an example, the announcement of sama taking over was a hundred and fifty comments of almost exclusively "Congratulations!"

They're posts that are almost exclusively doomed, either to incurious compliments, insults, or needless pessimism; what questions that are asked usually don't get answered, so there wouldn't really be a loss in it anyway.

>>smcl+n3
John Hamasaki is a criminal defense attorney in San Francisco who was a former member of the police commission. He seems to advertise himself by being intentionally incendiary, making up lies like the police get paid overtime to participate (i.e. walk) in the pride parade. There is also a group of people around him who amplify his lies. I can imagine people being fed up with being the target of his harassment, which I believe Gary was.

>>12_thr+(OP)
Anil can be combative on Twitter. I have respect for him and positive interactions under my real name, but I’m not surprised he would have gotten into a heated discussion at some point with Garry.

>>12_thr+k1
You can talk about it but when most folks in tech are fairly to extremely liberal, why is it bad to have representation from all sides? The left (which I’m guessing you are a part of) preaches diversity. Shouldn’t diversity also include political views as well as race, class, and gender affiliation?

>>12_thr+(OP)
so YC is celebrating having political influence that is explicitly pro-cop, hard on crime via punishment, etc., that's lovely

>>Vaslo+i7
this is their first and only openly politically-active hire at this level, with the politics explicitly relevant to their hiring, I don't know why you're calling that balanced representation unless you mean that it's balanced to have right wing leader-owners dominate liberals and leftist workers (lol)

>>shuckl+t6
Garry pushed a political agenda specifically for a tough on crime via punishment approach (in terms of policing streets, not so much tough on wage theft or other more leading crimes). You make it sound like it was some specific tactics that were the issue, rather than that the issue he's taking is with an ideologically diametrically opposed approach to addressing crime

>>wahnfr+6b
My comment was about Hamasaki being a liar and online harasser and doesn’t have anything to do with policy positions.

>>caslon+y5
I wouldn't call this a "churn announcement" - it's the biggest YC news in years. I guess I can think of a few different answers to your question. One is that since it's significant new information, it's on topic (job ads are the opposite of that). Another is that there's a special relationship between YC and the HN community, and it's good for the community to have space to discuss that. A third is that there is definitely no way that the community would support us trying to close such a topic to comments.

Also, job ads get placed on the front page by software. This submission got on the front page by upvotes like any other.

>>Vaslo+i7
Nope. Look up paradox of tolerance

>>12_thr+42
Callout/shaming culture is a stock phrase I use to describe the sort of internet culture we don't want here [1]. Maybe the word 'shaming' isn't so applicable in this case, though I do think shaming is part of why online warriors like to preserve the worst internet traces left by those they dislike, and copy them into each fresh discussion.

Re 'facts': this is a red herring. There are infinitely many facts. They don't select themselves; humans do that, and they do so for non-factual reasons [2]. As a matter of fact, "but it's a fact" is the most beloved defense of trolls—not that you mean it that way. (Edit: incidentally, I have no idea whether your claims about Garry, including the ones you deleted, were facts or not - but I'm assuming they are for present purposes because it makes the moderation point stronger.)

The problem with your post is that it was obvious online agitprop—in fact one couldn't find a more classic case (edit: before you edited it—it's less that way now). That's off topic on HN, but not because of trying to protect YC from criticism (we don't moderate HN that way [3] – plenty of people criticize YC here), nor because of political disagreement (there's room for a wide range of views, as long as people are using the site as intended)—but rather because it makes threads more predictable and nastier, and therefore more boring. We're trying to optimize for something else on HN [4].

Edit: I just noticed that you edited your GP comment to take out a couple of extreme guilt-by-association references and to add a relevant tweet by sama. Those are two steps towards an on-topic sort of political argument (good), but if you're going to edit comments after they've gotten replies, it's only fair to do so in a way that doesn't deprive other posts of their original meaning. My description ("hardened political rhetoric and seasoned talking points") was accurate about your original post and is less so now. In other words, you subtly changed the thread to make the moderation look less neutral and fair than it originally was. I hope that was just an accidental side effect, and that your motive for making those edits was a sincere desire to use HN as intended.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

[4] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

>>12_thr+k1
Because it reads like an extreme left wing talking point everyone is tired of. So many commens with the same wording makes people wondering if it's not a Russian disinformation/division campaign.

>>shuckl+t6
This seemed to be about some board of education thing though - Garry's tweet features a screenshot saying "THANK YOU for donating to our campaign to recall the school board..." but it's aimed at the Hamasaki guy.

>>Dma54r+3u
So as an outsider who is literally just trying to piece this together, it doesn't seem extreme or left-wing at all. Can you explain why this is an extreme left wing talking point?

>>dang+ll
It's definitely newsworthy and relevant to the community. I support the status quo of non interference (laissez-faire) by the mods into publishing status of this news story and your reasoning stated in this comment.

>>smcl+xv
Hamasaki takes sides and works with prolific accounts over any salient prog vs. mod local political issue. The fact that the topic in the screenshot had to do with the BOE recall specifically is pretty irrelevant. He had probably been harassing Garry for any local political position for months. Unfortunately, Hamasaki also recently deleted months of tweets to clean up his image for a local election run, so it’s hard to find citations.

>>smcl+3w
HOLY SHIT no way this is ridiculous, I just wanted to check something that sounded "crazy" and it's true. I liked about 5 anti @garrytan replies as a test and I am unable to tweet or retweet! What the fuck!!!

Are you serious! Garry I pay for one of your fucking services I just wanted to check that these people were WRONG not that they were correct. What the hell.

>>smcl+oT
I can't do shit on Twitter:

https://imgur.com/a/OBnVpUI

Cool! Ok so, confirmed. Garry Tan is a sinister guy. Glad I asked here!

Edit: Sorry but how is this downvoted to zero? I have done nothing except add five "likes" to Twitter and my account is now banned there. This is insane. I was pro-or-neutral-Garry at the start of this convo, he was just the Posterous guy. Now my Twitter is gone. What the hell?

Edit 2: uhh so how do you get an account back?

>>smcl+dV
It could simply be that twitter is having issues. I see weird stuff as well. ("something went wrong" messages all over the place).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32644427

>>smcl+dV
Twitter automatically bans new accounts all the time. (I’ve heard from others that contacting support helps, but I personally just gave up on getting an account.) If you want to test getting blocked, you need to do it with an established account.

>>dang+yt
I always learn from your posts dang - really appreciate this substantive explanation, informs my own thinking as we seek to build our own communities for curiosity.

>>wahnfr+n9
Indeed. I might considering applying now.

>>shuckl+t6
Is there a possibility that pragmatism may have played a bigger role than deeply ingrained philosophical and political ideologies? We are talking about a self described highly controversial and extreme political/social experiment in a local political setting that has global impacts for a variety of unrelated issues.

>>smcl+dV
Whether it's a ban or a glitch, why would you blame Garry for it? He doesn't control Twitter.

>>wahnfr+P9
For one, it would mean leadership that recognizes that Asians have been unfairly represented.

When we’re talking about left-winged workers, we’re talking about a bunch of ivory tower armchair leftists who get free lunch ( no irony intended ) and artisanal coffee, and have been the privileged class most of their lives.

If we’re talking about actual laborers, the democrats has abandoned that platform and serves the political gap that Donald Trump capitalized on.

>>12_thr+k1
If you had an indefensible objective argument to make, you wouldn't have used a throwaway

>>jacque+N71
Yeah it seems to be just a glitch. Kinda wild to see "just like some tweets, see what happens..." and then have Twitter completely crap out.

>>xmonke+lo
That only applies to fringe extremes in politics. Not to conservatism in general. That is an insane assumption to make.

>>shuckl+bT
> He had probably been harassing Garry for any local political position for months.

This is your red flag for motivated reasoning

>>wahnfr+n9
VC people have always been rightwing. They're not your friend.

>>achile+Rad
I’ve seen other people harassed by Hamasaki and been at the receiving end of it myself, so no, not really.