Disclaimer: No association with Google or the banned account. Also, strongly disagree with the banned user's take on the suit.
This ban seems unfair, and if it is rooted in an anti-astroturfing policy, then that policy appears way too aggressive - no one wants HN to be a marketing site for mega-corps, but passionately defending one's favorite company shouldn't result in a ban. Also, the moderators have all the power, and accused none. While moderating is likely arduous and maybe even moribund, being a fanboy/AstroTurf-er especially one not behaving badly, isn't worthy of silencing/banning (that's my opinion).
The consumers of HN content have a healthy skepticism towards polarizing opinions, and as with all social media, have their guard up on what can be blindly trusted. This ban assumes your average HN-er cannot tell a fanboy apart from a neutral third party - which is not the case. Let opinions be, let the fanboys talk freely (as long as they're not impolite), and trust the HN audience to use their better judgement in drawing any conclusions. I don't think anyone assumes the top comment on any topic to be an endorsement by YC/HN, or it's users.
I can appreciate that it seems that way, but this person has been doing this for many years with dozens of accounts. If you saw what we see, I think you'd consider it abusive too, and I'm certain that the community as a whole would.
You don't have to look far through https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... to see how many hours I've spent defending users accused of astroturfing and telling other users that they can't sling such accusations without evidence. That problem is actually far more serious than this one, in its corrosive effects. But the flip side is that it does occasionally happen that the evidence is so unequivocal that public banning is called for, and this is one of those cases.
I don't personally see why it matters if an account has a penchant for supporting one company. Optimally ideas would stand alone and be evaluated without consideration of the author. Thus it would be irrelevant if an account is a "shill."
Curious: Why do sites like HN and Reddit, those most vulnerable to abuse by multiple accounts, don’t require mandatory email or even phone verification?
Let people have multiple accounts for privacy if they want, but disallow multiple posts/comments/votes from the same person.
I can't speak for Reddit, but on HN the idea is not to place barriers in front of anyone who wants to join. If we demand that people jump through extra hoops, many will simply bail instead, including many who were inspired to jump in and comment because of something they saw on the site. That sort of spontaneous participation is precious. It keeps things fresh and makes HN more interesting. So although, yes, we incur a lot of costs (and pain) from spammers and trolls by being so open, the good things we gain are worth more.
To pick a couple of famous names, I doubt that Alan Kay or Peter Norvig would have bothered with HN if we'd placed up-front demands on them. Countless experts have shown up here over the years to create accounts and share firsthand about what they know. Here's a recent example that sticks in my mind: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22007115. It's particularly common for project creators or article authors to show up and comment on their work. We don't want to do anything to make that less likely.
HN is fortunate in that we're not under pressure to monetize users, squeeze more engagement out of them, or optimize them in any way. The factors that drive companies into corralling their users and eking information out of them don't apply here. The only thing we need to do is have HN be interesting. An open community, assuming it can be persuaded not to destroy itself, is more likely to be interesting.
I suppose because people _will_ get around these restrictions if they set their mind to it - so there may be slightly less spam, but at the cost of everybody's privacy.
Also, I'd suggest required phone/email as the end user seems to be a risk. For example my Twitter account is locked because I never gave a phone. Then a year later it comes out attackers can figure out your number. Not worth it to me.
Also, I can get an SMS over VIOP for cheap for a limited number of days. If I were an attacker the email/phone verification does nothing to stop me.
It stands for Bookface, which is a forum that Garry Tan created years ago for YC founders. It's a wonderful resource for the YC alumni network, but it's not an alternative to HN. Most YC alums are on both.
What's typical to see on Bookface are founders asking and answering questions about specific challenges, people launching their startups (that part is a bit overlappy with HN, but the discussions are smaller and I would say narrower), people looking to hire or get hired, people asking for intros, posts about apartments and offices for rent, announcements of events...that kind of thing.
This ban seems unfair, and if it is rooted in an anti-astroturfing policy, then that policy appears way too aggressive - no one wants HN to be a marketing site for mega-corps, but passionately defending one's favorite company shouldn't result in a ban. Also, the moderators have all the power, and accused none. While moderating is likely arduous and maybe even moribund, being a fanboy/AstroTurf-er especially one not behaving badly, isn't worthy of silencing/banning (that's my opinion).
The consumers of HN content have a healthy skepticism towards polarizing opinions, and as with all social media, have their guard up on what can be blindly trusted. This ban assumes your average HN-er cannot tell a fanboy apart from a neutral third party - which is not the case. Let opinions be, let the fanboys talk freely (as long as they're not impolite), and trust the HN audience to use their better judgement in drawing any conclusions. I don't think anyone assumes the top comment on any topic to be an endorsement by YC/HN, or it's users.