What to Do

In lieu of explanation I'm guessing the flagging is knee-jerk anti-PG stuff.

Disappointing response.

Why are people anti-PG?

I don't know except I get the impression from reading responses to him over time that he represents something frustrating to some people here and on X.

[flagged]

Regardless of whom you're putting down, how right you are, or feel you are, comments like this and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43370236 are badly against the site guidelines. Please don't post any more of these to HN.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Someone should correct me if I am wrong, but AFAIK - PG stands behind current shift in USA’s status quo. That is, support of MAGA, Trump, DOGE, techno takeover of USA, that vague idea of of converting USA into totalitarian corporate city states controlled by billionaire techno class.

Though last one shouldn’t be surprising as it was endorsed by YC 10+ years ago.

Hence - people are now much more critical of him.

It should be acceptable to criticize rich, powerful people in unemotional terms, but I wasn't even doing that. I was summarizing the other comments on this thread.

Here are examples of comments (that remain visible) that I was summarizing:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43515252

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43526888

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43527106

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43515723

In the future I can be more careful to say something like, "Based on the comments here, people are saying that he..." but I thought that was implied in my comment already.

I'm sorry but to me at least, this was not clear in your comment at all.

Generally it's a good idea to explicitly disambiguate intent (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).

Idlewords has devoted an entire essay to the topic, "Dabblers And Blowhards" (2005). As a callout quote, and one immediately preceding a long list of specific issues with pg in his own essay Maciej Cegłowski is critiquing:

It's no surprise, then, that a computer programmer would want to bask in some of the peripheral coolness that comes with painting, especially when he has an axe to grind about his own work being 'mere engineering'. Yet while this might be charming or quirky in the abstract, it gets seriously annoying when real facts start getting butchered...

<https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm>

From a flagged subthread here, several prior criticisms on HN:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43515252

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43526888

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43527106

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43515723

(From: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43529517>.)

The question asked for specific issues with a specific person.

The comment flagged, that status apparently endorsed by your own response, answers that specific question.

It's extraordinarily difficult to write a critique of someone, particularly where that critique focuses on political, social, and personality aspects, without hitting some nerves, individually or collectively.

I'll note that HN's policy is to moderate YC firms less (and yes, that's not "not at all" <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33974170>), rather than more. I'd suggest a similar approach to YC personnel, particularly current/past leadership and/or founders.