> I would hope HN has a policy not to censor negative information about YC
I don't use the word "censor" because it means different things to people, but yes: literally the first rule of HN moderation is that we moderate less, not more, when YC or a YC startup is involved: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
I call it the first rule because it was the first thing that pg firehosed me with on the morning that I walked into moderation "training" with him. He was yelling about it (not in a mean way - in a "you absolutely need to know this" way) before I'd had a chance to grab a chair. And we've stuck to it ever since.
That isn't enough to stop some people from saying we do nefarious things, but it does allow us to answer such claims in good conscience. That alone makes it worth sticking to. More importantly, it seems to be sufficient to earn the provisional trust of the community, as long as we keep answering questions when they come up.
The one nuance I sometimes point out is that "moderating less" doesn't mean "suspending all moderation and doing nothing at all" - that would leave too large a loophole. It means that we take whatever standard practice we would normally apply in a situation, and then do something less than that.
In the present case, I would normally have left the post [flagged] and/or edited the sensational title, but because it was YC related, I turned off the flags and left the title intact—even though that title is about as silly as describing someone who quotes "to be or not to be, that is the question" as "contemplating suicide". Normally we'd never let that stand on HN, but first rule is first rule.