I think we almost certainly agree at least about the nature of YC, but I didn't make my point clearly. A church is a community that meets in a building; the building the community meets in is not the church. Many smaller churches meet in neighborhood centers that are state-owned, if the state imposed a no prayer rule on meetings in the neighborhood center, I suspect the community would find a new building to meet in.

By analogy: the amoral VC nitwits that own the HN servers could try to enforce their values on the discussions here, but doing so with a heavy hand would quickly drive the true 'hacker' community elsewhere. Dang has a very light hand, especially when it comes to topics around YC that get discussed here.

Sure, there are no shortage of bootlicking CEO cargo cultists here looking for the right turtleneck/leather jacket combo to ascend to their rightful place at the top of the pile with PG and Sama... And being associated with the HN community's ethos certainly gives an undeserved glow to YC, which like all VC accelerators really is just a predatory tool of the wealthy investor class to maintain control of capital (a poor kid that grows up and founds a company that creates a ton of wealth could have dangerous ideas, best to capture them early and give them an approved board and structures to constrain them...)

That said, I frequently come across things here that subvert the platform's owners. For example, I think pretty much every member of my anti-VC founder alliance [0] found it through my own comments here. I get personal joy from promoting that here, subverting YC's own platform to challenge their golden goose.

So yes, know whose house this is, but stay aware of who has the power (us).

[0] https://NOVC.fyi