Tangential but why do articles about Flock never have (YC S17) in the title like articles about other YC companies?

They are a YCombinator company! TIL.

I'm genuinely taken aback by that.

I can clearly see a bunch of brand new accounts brigading the thread, YCisComplict, YCisBad etc. Presumably bots or something but this is still bad even discounting those accounts.

We need more Aaron Schwartz’s in the world. Shame he's gone. Lads like that seemed kind of dorky and a bit pretentious in their pursuit of righteousness back in the day but my god their absence is noted in this day and age.

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logans_gun 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

What is a “bot” account in this case?

People make new accounts all the time to shit talk YC, HN, dang, etc. Anonymity (in some limited form) is a feature.

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testfrequency 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Welcome to the thunder dome. YC is not our friends, they just host what (was) a niche forum where early tech peeps could have mostly civil conversations. It’s become increasingly hostile in moderation and sharp political opinions, that a lot of the joy here has fumbled out. (sorry mod team..I know you deal with a lot and traffic/spam keeps growing).

	▲	ModsMakeTrouble 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Excessive moderation creates spam. On strict sites like these, everyone runs sock puppet accounts and throwaways directly in response to the moderation. A site with nothing like that would have far fewer accounts and engagement. Ah ha!

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john_strinlai 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

great question, which you will either not receive an answer to, or you will receive a deeply unsatisfying generic response from dang/tomhow.

in either case, it really leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

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conductr 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

To be less cynical, I think it would require editing to original submission. I also see why editing the “bad press” company submissions could have undesirable optics. So, maybe the mods just choose to be a bit more laissez faire than normal and lets the community self moderate the related posts. Probably within some reason in the comment section, but they allow us all to be quite critical in ways that could easily be considered against the HN guidelines and they’re not squashing it either. I think that is perhaps the best stance for them to take honestly.

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rglover 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Surprised but not surprised. That explains a lot.

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gsky 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

YC owns hacker news.

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ubermonkey 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You know why.

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tom_ 10 hours ago | parent [-]

I assume it's because Flock is a YC company, and HN is the YC board, and somebody has instituted a policy of not making the link clear (and it worked on me! I had no idea) due to the negative publicity - but that's so obvious, that you must be thinking of something else.

	▲	YCisVeryBad 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[flagged]

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HNIsEvil2 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[dead]

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simonwsimonw 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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