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).

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!