https://twitter.com/Prafulfillment/status/140093402468041523...
EDIT: Reply on HN by the author: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400221
He's now denying that he instructed others on how to skip the line, although it's not really that clear of a denial.
You have no expectation of privacy if you announce (let alone advocate for, or instruct how-to) behaviour against public health policy _during_a_pandemic_.
The contrast with people who have been working hard to match people with appointments couldn't be more stark.
If he was indeed talking about inappropriately skipping the line, then this guy is a bad actor. But I should point out that we don't have any idea - the situation could have been very misrepresented - and he could have done nothing wrong.
But given the public information ... this Tweet is going to come of 'Snitches Get Stitches' in a 'lacking in self awareness' kind of way, as opposed to the 'I was slandered and misrepresented publicly, and that can be very damaging, I'm glad this issue is behind us" kind of way.
Why are adults in the US using Twitter/GIF memes instead of finding thoughtful and mature ways of communicating this stuff? I don't like this evolution.
Regardless, they or YC should have addressed this publically at the time, rather than waiting and staying silent. The YC brand is damaged because we don't know if they acted ethically, or enforced the omerta. Everyone's reputation is taking an acid bath because of unclear communication.
Then you have this person try to damage Ycombinator because one of their founders spoke internally about the matter. Absolutely tactless. You'd expect future founders to be able to consider potential repercussions for biting the hand that's serving them.
Tidbits which, AFAICS, slowly tilt the balance back over in favour of Biggar having been more right than wrong: https://twitter.com/SarahBelleLin/status/1370071520953835520
Much as I'd love to, it's not my place to say why the original title was inaccurate, so I'll just remind you all that there are two or more sides to every story and not everything on Twitter is true.
In keeping with the rule that we moderate HN less, not more, when YC or a YC startup is involved (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...), I'm not doing anything else to the submission. Normally, of course, we'd downweight this sort of petty drama.
“Much as I'd love to, it's not my place to say why the original title was inaccurate, so I'll just remind you all that there are two or more sides to every story and not everything on Twitter is true.”
And “Normally, of course, we would downweight this sort of petty drama.” And could have avoided unhelpful conflict in the threads below. You sort of threw your opinion out without expressing it outright.
For what it is worth I have no opinion either way and generally agree this sort of post should be downweighted.
You've always been a fantastic moderator, dang. To be honest, it's not your place to say anything on the matter publicly, especially not an insinuating comment such as that. The conditions of separation are private. A company can create pretext and other excuses as to why they separate with someone. The only conclusive answer is that there is no conclusive answer here, and there probably never will be unless OP takes legal action.
I think this won't be the first time that a techie underdog goes up against the YC crowd and is shut down by ridicule, legalese, and other platitudes. It's important to not censor those folks, and also important to not try and publicly denounce them in the way that you have. It will only work against YC. The underdog will always have something more interesting to say than the company. They will bide their time and come together. It's best for the company and its constituents to not comment on the matter at all, or post provocative content that encourages uncivil discourse.
I've seen a lot of YC companies doing this to their employees. I think it's going to backfire in a really ugly way in a few years.
This reads a bit like "not to be that guy, but...". You won't say why for some reason, but clearly it's not to stay out of it because you're letting innuendo do the job.
Alternative suggestion: "That is inaccurate but it's not my place to elaborate." It would still express the point but avoid reinforcing the circle the wagons/"blue wall of silence"ness of this situation.
I'm sure you have a good point, I'm just not sure how to do it better. I needed to give enough of an explanation to satisfy people's curiosity at least a little bit even though I can't satisfy it for real. I also needed to make sure that my comment had enough information in it to answer (let's say) the top 10 obvious objections, or it would have brought a flood of them down on my head.
If so, how does one make that request, and what would the process look like?
There have been a few titles I knew to be extremely misleading or false, but never thought there was a way to rectify it without publicly providing information I wasn’t able to share openly.
In such situations the thing to do is email hn@ycombinator.com.
Took me a few minutes to realize it was LOL.
I'm paraphrasing.
Down weight? So you guys internally pick and choose topics to weight down? I thought HN was purely community driven with only comments being moderated.
Of course on the surface you guys say you only downweight petty drama but I truly wonder if that's actually true. The fact that you guys downweight anything without trusting the community makes me question how fair, balanced and unbiased things are on HN.
Additionally the person who this tweet was about posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400221 and it doesn't seem like drama. It seems like injustice and misinterpretation and stubborn refusal. His only option is to appeal to the public but of course YC has to color it with their bias.
It really looks like he was kicked out over a tweet from his perspective. Getting kicked out of YC may seem petty to YC but it is not petty to the person who was kicked out. Even Dang calling this kind of thing "petty drama" does unparalleled damage to his reputation.
The right way to deal with this is not to touch this post and let paul make blog post or something and see if the community votes it up on HN.
HN is a curated site, always has been, and has never claimed otherwise.
It is an interaction between three subsystems: community, software, and moderators. All three are necessary. If you or anyone would like to know more, here are some links to past explanations to start with. If there are still questions after familiarizing yourself with that material, I'd be happy to answer them.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
> Of course on the surface you guys say you only downweight petty drama
That is obviously not at all what I said.
> Would you like to change the John Carmack post to include his entire tweet as the title?
No, "John Carmack on JPEG" strikes me as an accurate title for that post, and in any case the entire tweet wouldn't fit HN's 80 char limit. When users think there's an inaccuracy or come up with a better (more accurate and neutral) title, we're usually happy to make a change.
> YC moderation here on a YC-related post is not fair
The principle, as I explained above, is that we moderate HN less when YC or a YC startup is involved (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). Less, however, does not mean not at all - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... That would be a huge loophole. In this case I did the minimum to correct a false statement in the title and was hands off after that.
> It’s also unfair that this reply is placed above substantive discussion
That would be true if we had placed it there, but users upvoted it there.
I'm not saying that the internal processes were satisfactory -- I don't know either way, and I think this position is consistent with both cases. I think the two options available are,
1. Criticise publicly and leave, and
2. Work within the system, and accept outcomes that go against you.
Shooting the messenger, if the messenger went through all of the proper channels and made every effort to rectify the matter appropriately internally, would then be counterproductive because it magnifies the issue by creating a martyr.
It's difficult to know what actually transpired, but I don't think a reasonable person would air dirty laundry without trying every possible avenue and appealing to leadership to take a position. So either they're unreasonable or YC let them down, it's impossible to say without independent observers in the know stating their impression.
But being banned from YC is a fairly extreme measure - especially for an activity that has a hint of moral impetus.
Both 'skipping vaccine lines' and 'immediately naming and shaming private conversations to the entire world' are kind of selfish and toxic signals.
If I were the King of YC I would have had condescending words with both of them and told them to grow up and then that would be the end of it.
Note however, we don't really know what happened behind the scenes.
I don't know if it was immediate, but I'm pretty sure there was no naming.
This is exactly why people in positions of power are afraid of transparency and why there is such a anti-media bias in the tech industry.
1. Skipping vaccine line and talking about it is not actually against BookFace/YC ToS, or it would be a stretch to apply ToS.
2. Publicly talking about matters inside the private group is against ToS since it breaches privacy. In a way that paints the group negatively, nonetheless.
Pretty straightforward. It doesn't really matter *to YC* whether anyone skipped a line or not, what matters are private forum matters getting blasted to hundreds (thousands?) of Twitter users.
Edit: before you get angry, I'm presenting this from the most plausible perspective of YC, not my own feelings on the matter (which are irrelevant).
Edit2: what are people seeing that I'm not seeing here? Clearly I'm missing something, because wow I've never gotten piled on like this on HN.
Biggar tweeted about his unhappiness about the behavior of a person in the private group.
He received a public response fromt he person in question with a dismissive meme.
He in turn responded to that.
So, one could argue that the line-jumping-advocate relinquished his privacy in the first place.
So never mind their high-falutin' ideas of Founders being A Better Class Of People; in the end it's just frickin' Fight Club after all.
I've never been part of any such decision, but I do know YC and the people who have to make such decisions, and from what I've seen they'd be reasoning from first principles or at least trying to.
He later issues a 'correction' (why not delete the original wrong tweet?) that says that the story about "advocating for lying to skip lines" is false. [1]
I don't have any part of this and I'm confused and don't know what's going on here. But it does not seem like the tweet everyone is focusing on was even true. So the story becomes possibly, that YC kicked someone out for spreading lies about people in their internal community? I don't know.
[1] "I was incorrect in saying the 2nd founder lied, and would like to apologize." https://twitter.com/paulbiggar/status/1370144350861135881
It's still partially true - the allegation of lying was wrong, but the allegation of instructing others how to lie is still being made. This is clarified by the tweet that you linked.
It makes sense because in some states its been basically any adult can walk in and get a shot for months already. I'm surprised there is anywhere in the country left where that is not the case.
Priority groups don’t even make sense. It’s some egalitarian crap for the sake of it and more so for buying votes from older ppl.
Then we are left with: it’s simply against the rules. And as if people in SF care about that.
Why r so many people in SF on these moral crusades anyway. Getting high off enforcing rules and looking down on others.
Everyone should be equal…as long as I get my ridiculous salary and elite network. It’s like imposter syndrome for the privileged…so they need to pretend they are for the common man.
Good riddance to such crusaders. PG is a boss.
Biggar violated the all time favourite in-group rule: Don't talk out of school. Don't talk about fight club. Don't snitch.
The other founders violated a norm against pushing yourself ahead and taking advantage of others that doesn't even seem to hold in many groups, especially upper class/wealthy ones.
This doesn't mean that being late to work is worse than drunk driving, or that person A is worse than person B. Not everything is a general judgement on worth or character.
If I go on a work forum and describe my bad behaviour, behaviour that is harmful to others, and advocate for others to do it, I'm going to get in trouble, and possibly fired.
If I publicly discuss private work information, I'll definitely get fired.
If I mention the bad behaviour of someone at work publicly, without naming names, I might get a talking to, but probably won't be fired.
How a group reacts to those different things over time defines the norms and culture of the group.
Unless of course, your job is driving.
This whole thing of trying to criminalize and be outraged at folks in this space seems way out of whack.
So good on ycombinator!
Same thing with masks, no one allowed to wear N95's but health care folks. I had masks from the fires and my breathing issue. I wore the same mask for a few weeks against the rules. Got flak from folks saying a) masks don't work and b) I should have saved it for health care folks. Not only is that contradictory it's dumb.
It’s not the same as the accusation of someone skipping the line.
We were able to schedule immediate appointments in an adjacent county populated by hardcore Trumpers. Upon arriving at the drive-through vaccination site, there was only one other car in the lot. No danger of cutting the line in that county.
My point is only, it's sometimes dangerous to throw stones without asking questions or getting the full picture first. Taking doses when you aren't qualified for them is overall a bad thing I think we can all agree.
It seems to me that the important information would be: did anybody who was eligible fail to get vaccinated as a result of the extras dropping in? In your story the answer is no. In the other dude's story, it seems like we don't know. If his story is accurate then the answer is probably not because otherwise the people running the site would have told him "please don't do that because it might take doses away from the eligible". But who knows.
I just waited till it was generally available and the local website had appointments available. Added bonus is by waiting the vaccine trials run that much longer so you have more data that it is safe.
I’m the type of guy how likes to go to mediocre restaurants to avoid waiting in line for good ones, so maybe I’m just weird.
Will they really wait until all elderly are vaccinated first? This would never work.
Just give it to everyone and it goes faster. While we wait for old people to get vaccinated it still circulates among young, who come into contact with old and unvaccinated, hence not helping things.
None of you know any of the internal details but what I can state is that Paul has no idea what he's talking about and later admits to the fact I wasn't lying.
Here's the order of events:
1. I went to a neighborhood clinic in Oakland, CA that's literally next door to my house, I can see the church from my window. Paul lives in NYC which is on the opposite end of the country.
2. I asked them about eligibility and told them I don't clear CA guidelines. They told me it's first come, first served with an ID showing I am 18+.
3. I showed up the next day, waited in line for 4 hours then got jabbed.
4. Posted it in an internal forum for other founders.
5. A few people had issues so raised them which I addressed but YC still took down the post within the day.
6. I appealed but YC still held their decision as final.
Outcome: YC founder came with his aunt, uncle, and mom all over 65 to get jabbed who didn't know about the vaccine site.
---
Paul ends up tweeting about it and making a huge deal around something he has no idea about. He gets a bunch of people on Twitter upset about something they don't know about.
Outcome: Internet rage.
Your post suggests that the result of your post on the YC message board is that people who did not live in those zip codes came to Oakland to take advantage of a program that was not meant for them (and please correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s what I’m seeing here).
I think if you really want to exonerate yourself here, you should probably come clean about what kinds of objections were raised to your original post, because it is very plain to me how the kind of thing you’re describing could be seen by a reasonable person as unethical.
Others standing in line asked coordinators walking the line, "Am I eligible here?" and the coordinators responded, without hesitation, "Yes, you're in the right place! Stay in line." No questions asked.
The vaccination site may well have been "intended" for West Oakland residents and/or underprivileged folks, but if that's right, they could have at least put up a sign saying so, and maybe the coordinator(s) could have said "this vaccine is intended for West Oakland residents only."
I think there's an argument to be made that everyone in line who didn't live in West Oakland should have just assumed that the vaccine wasn't intended for them, but I strongly believe that the ethics of the situation are "If you're offered a vaccine, take it." https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/21/opinion/covid-vaccine-eth... It's not just for you; it's for everyone around you, especially children and others who can't be vaccinated.
What's funny is that friends of mine who were okay with that waited for hours and hours (up to 8 for some) to get their vaccine. I got mine 2 weeks later in my car, and was in and out within 30 minutes. The mania seemed so stupid and gross in hindsight, but I think some of my friends at least regretted it.
I’ve seen a lot of pointless internet fights but this is truly next level.
And also, basic common sense, the sites are run by adults. If the adults over there don't care, why should you care?
Unless you have specific knowledge of people lied to get to use those sites, nobody need your judgement to "exonerate" themselves.
It was crystal clear what the intent was and the poster was called out for it. There was a strong negative reaction.
I felt that if I ever decided to get the shot because of my employment as a “farm worker”, there would be one elderly person or real essential worker that had to wait another day. And that didn’t seem fair. So I waited until the general population could get vaccinated in April.
Just because technically someone will give you the shot doesn’t mean you’ve made an ethical decision.
They gave him one without checking anything. His response? “America has the best vaccine program on the planet. They have so many rules in Zurich that the confusion is holding things back. They’d rather throw away vaccines than break minor rules”.
Vaccination should be easy, bureaucracy free and straightforward; especially now. I can understand age restrictions from Dec-Mar.
This is not like standing in the line at DMV. The entire country needs to be vaccinated and if we put too many rules around this, we all lose and that’s unethical. I urge everyone to be reasonable and flexible. This does not mean you should go and cut lines, push elderly and others aside. The goal for everyone should be efficient distribution of vaccines.
That part makes no sense. If it “wasn’t for them” they’d have been turned away. You have to provide your drivers license to get vaccinated. Your address is on the license. If it was limited to people living in a certain zip code they could easily turn them away.
What’s wrong with this? Our whole society operates like this, but it’s suddenly wrong for some small fries to “take advantage of the law” ?” Write your laws correctly, and don’t blame people for looking out for themselves using completely legal means.
False. A reasonable person would know that the shots don't last after they are thawed out. If someone skipped the appointment, the ethical thing to do is put it in the next warm body that's standing by rather than waste the shot. No one owes anyone any "coming clean" over encouraging others not to let those shots go to waste.
There was misinformation that it was first-come, first-serve to anyone who wanted it. I looked into it at the time and it was easy to verify that this was not true. The CA State website, the church's fliers, and their help line were all clear.
Here's an example clearly listing who was eligible: https://twitter.com/SarahBelleLin/status/1370071520953835520...
They intentionally did not check eligibility to avoid putting barriers up for high risk people. It was effectively an honor system.
This site ended up being oversubscribed and most doses went to people outside the targeted area or demographic: https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/A-West-Oakland-chu...
I know next to nothing and as such would typically hesitate to comment. Others appear to know next to nothing and appear very interested in sharing their opinions here, and I don’t quite understand why...
The modern internet in a nutshell. Of course, this is nothing new. We just now have more powerful tools for doing it.
I wish saying "I don't know" or "I'm not sure but I'd like to learn more about that" was more widely valued.
The worst part about this is that when more information does come to light, it's so rare to see an "oh wow, I really shouldn't have jumped to conclusions" apology. Instead, a lot of the time you see folks dig their heels in more, lest they actually have to admit they were wrong.
Also on the Monday before the FEMA agents were telling me they had less people than vaccines, Tuesday they barely covered the people with vaccines, and Wednesday (when I got it) onwards they had slightly more demand when they asked people to tell their friends.
It's up to governments to enforce rules around their clinics instead of moral crusaders that live across the country with no on-the-ground experience to tweet an internal post to generate outrage.
Here are articles around why there was so few people getting vaccinated in our area and why FEMA requested us ask our friends to show up.
"COVID-19 Vaccination Hesitancy in the United States: A Rapid National Assessment " - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7778842/
"Addressing Justified Vaccine Hesitancy in the Black Community " - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8009077/
As I’m sure you are aware, the brunt of COVID infections and deaths in the Bay Area were borne mostly by our Black and Latinx neighbors, especially those who continued to work during the pandemic, serving those of us who were able to work from home in our underwear all year. And I’m also sure you’re aware that the relaxed eligibility criteria that allowed you to get vaccinated early was meant to reach them, not you.
You can dismiss your critics as “moral crusaders.” You cannot dismiss the fact that the people public health officials were trying to reach with the vaccine you took died at a much higher rate from COVID than, for example, the community of Y Combinator alumni.
How you feel about any of that is up to you, but I hope you’re at least willing to be honest about what happened.
Good for you. You got vaccinated, got a few people vaccinated, and the world is safer at large. Ignore the haters~!
There are a number of 'special' vaccination sites in the USA which are indeed vaccinating first come, first served people without going through any special qualifications/eligibility check. For instance FEMA was, and still is, running a mass vaccination site in Yakima, WA which was a massive hot spot of infections in WA state.
They quite specifically told the media that they were focused on getting "shots into arms" and not spending a lot of time on each person checking residency documents.
https://www.google.com/search?q=yakima+wa+vaccination+site+f...
Although by the time it opened it was also possible for most people in the Seattle metro area to get a shot without a very long wait, I do know a few people who drove over there and quite clearly showed their drivers license for ID, and got vaccinated without violating any policy or lying about anything whatsoever.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/washingtoni...
A good example of how confusing and micro managed the eligibility charade was.
Same here in Canada. Some private clinics have been offering FCFS vaccines to eligible age groups for some time now. I assumed the US must be the same and wondered what the outrage is here. I got messages from people encouraging me to do the same.
As well as entire states in certain parts of the USA.
For example, Texas, where you only have to be at least 12 years old[0]. In many cities in Texas, they're at more than 50% and running out of arms to stick them in, and definitely very short or no lines. No idea why California has those requirements instead of just opening up more jab spots.
https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20210326/california-fema-...
It also doesn't help that this person keeps changing his story all the time. On Twitter he claims that joe Biden announced that all adults are eligible for vaccination in March. This is patently false.
All that we know is that he got vaccinated in March ahead of federal guidelines. Did he wait to obtain vaccines left over at the end of the day? Or did he enter a line meant to serve underserved communities. We cannot tell.
As a non-essential worker with no risk factors, I felt that my contribution to the pandemic was to stay home and wait until my turn. I did, by the way, wait until the vaccine was generally available before scheduling. Before general availability, most of my friends my age (mid-30s) had been vaccinated by stretching the truth. I felt like the idiot, and had a fair amount of resentment.
I wonder about the surplus doses, though. Did a substantial culture of seeking out unused doses result in outcomes that were net positive from a utilitarian point of view? It's unclear to me how much "line cutting" this resulted in.
Clearly, stretching the truth to get a dose ahead of others is selfish at least. Back in March, I assume that there were plenty of people in need that didn't/couldn't get an appointment that needed a shot more than YCombinator founders. This wasn't stretching the truth though, just exploitation of a loophole and small surpluses of a limited resource.
In the end, I think the morality hinges on your question, koolhaas. To what extent did standby shots interfere with mitigating the health crisis. Is that what dasickis was doing? Was dasickis aware of opportunity cost of taking that shot? Did he even care?
https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/03/13/covid-your-bay-area-g...
There are vax centers for priorized people and then every doc gets a bunch of vaccinations for their own patienst, which don't have to be priorized.
Now, some vax centers are temporarily closed, because they run out of vaccinations, so priorized groups cant get vaccinated anymore.
But if you find some doc somewhere, who still got a few jabs left, you can vaccinated there even if you aren't priorized.
All the fema pop up sites ran out every day and thus shut down and turned people away.
But that swings both ways, and it does not speak well that 1 side was penalized so heavily for it, irrespective of whether they were in the right or wrong.
Of course, it’s even more egregious coming on the heels of a Ycombinator founder defending someone who did far far worse.
Why? That seems to be the key question and I don't see an answer to it anywhere in this discussion.
It's still not clear why they were not sticking to whatever the current phase California was in at the time. I've seen a couple claims on that, both of which are believable.
1. The site was participating in a Federal vaccination program, not a state vaccination program. The state rollout phases only applied to state programs.
2. They didn't get enough people making appointments to use up their vaccine allotment. When that happened (or when people made but didn't keep appointments) sites were allowed to give the leftover vaccine out first come first served to anyone who met the requirements of the FDA emergency authorization for the vaccine they were using.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/oakland/comments/m4bqx9/a_west_oakl...
Make what you want to about it.
https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20210326/california-fema-...
Did this YC founder and his aunt, uncle and mom also live in the neighbourhood?
Also, I'm curious about those "issues" if you were just intending to help out people in your neighbourhood? What issues were there with your post?
My thought is... when it comes to vaccines. It doesn't matter who goes first and who goes later. The fact that someone (anyone) is vaccinated helps us all. I still dont have the vaccine and will get it later. But I already feel safer with all the people that have been vaccinated. Theres no way people can do wrong!!
I gave him the benefit of doubt, but should have been more skeptical upon seeing pronouns in bio. It's a curiously predictive heuristic. For whatever reason, pronoun people tend to be particularly good at generating internet drama.
I also had people complain at me, and I had to patiently ask them, "would you rather the doses expire"? It's really frustrating but I understand the confusion and also the general feeling of "unfairness", as everyone right-thinking is eager to get vaccinated if possible.
I'm betting there's more to this story.
It’s really sad for me, to be honest. I used to really aspire to VC. But I’ve accepted I can only bootstrap at this point because of the treatment I’ve heard of others experiencing. I don’t think I could handle it emotionally.
Hopefully YC doesn't pull a coinbase/Basecamp after this.
Just because you have an private internal forum doesn't mean people should need to treat it like fight club, or be concerned about their place in the club for calling out bad behaviour.
I drove someone to what I suppose was one of these clinics. Was pouring rain. They had shots left over. Clinic staff said please get a shot. The one problem - their form didn't have a spot for leftover shots, so they had to lie about my eligibility.
https://www.reddit.com/r/oakland/comments/m4bqx9/comment/gqu...
1) whether he was really kicked out over that tweet
2) whether what he said in that tweet was true
Imagine giving a speech to your team, and there is one employee who is rolling their eyes and smirking at things you say, and who you know disagrees with you. It’s very difficult to block out - and their are few who can handle that. You may be 100% onboard after a heated discussion and not making any outward gestures, but your mere presence will leave the person imagining you are rolling your eyes. And this festers.
You need to find a way to put yourself in their shoes and really feel what it’s like to have someone very critical of things around.
Yea, reputation is everything and you should never be completely open and it’s why people water down everything they say and end up kissing ass.
Even people who say they can take any criticism can’t. This is the best lesson you can learn.
And it goes without saying, overtly criticizing the king is pretty obviously a bad idea.
And that’s a bit of a subjective call
Especially since my social bubble is so very privileged. Let's face it. The majority of us are in good health with cushy jobs. We can afford to stay home. We can afford to wear high quality medical masks. We could afford to wait the extra month for a vaccine. Besides, a month or two is nothing compared to how long many countries are going to be waiting.
I can somewhat understand why people act this way, especially if they're pushing their loved ones to skip the line. But I can't help but feel it's this view of "I get mine" that is so ugly. And for what? A little more freedom a couple weeks early? What's the point?
do you ignore the DMV safety guidelines to check your tires everytime you before you drive? there's thousands of govt health and safety guidelines.
People think that because some opinion of theirs is justified, all consequences related to any public behavior based of that opinion should be nullified. Well, reality seems to frequently think otherwise.
his YC company is defunct so his risk tolerance is higher. getting social media points was probably the last bit of value he was able to extract from his YC association.
* Action A occurs which is widely agreed to be misguided and reprehensible by YC and other forum members. However, Action A was not explicitly against any existing rule at the time, it was just super-dickish. Action A was probably immediately widely (if not universally) condemned by community members and YC. YC tells the person, don't do that ever again because now it's against the rules. Maybe they spanked that person in other ways, I don't know. I'm confident the idiot was the recipient of overwhelmingly negative social consequences from members of the private community.
* Another person is very angry about Action A and commits Action B by taking private forum events onto public social media. Action B is clearly, explicitly against an existing, very simple rule. Perhaps others have already been banned for violating this rule.
Despite our intuitions to the contrary, the stupidity and gross awfulness of Action A doesn't somehow offset the fact Action B is against an existing rule and Action A wasn't at the time it was committed. It's not wrong that YC enforced the clear rule against Action B. YC may even have had very mixed feelings about it.
To me, in the absence of further factual context, it seems uncharitable to reflexively pillory YC - even though I admit I feel tempted to do exactly that.
The depressing thing is: Founders who want to play by ethical rules, will ask. "May be I too should engage in this behaviour, just to level the playing field".
Bit of a sensationalist post title
We know who always loses when the Streisand Effect becomes in action.
If you want to criticize someone, use their name rather than "YC founder" multiple times.
If your Tweet contains misleading info, delete it rather than post a different threaded Tweet (which no one will see) with a clarification.
If the rest of your YC class now has doubts about whether what they discuss is really confidential, it's pretty clear that you have to go.
Remember when y’all kept saying there’s no free speech on Facebook or Twitter? Well, it’s worse here, because if you don’t toe that line and bend the knee, you might get your user privileges limited.
Edit: here it is. +3 points and flagged. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26914977
Edit 2: and here's the dressing down I got:
> Regardless of how wrong or badly-behaved other people (be they HN users, celebrity CEOs, or imperialist bullies) are or you feel they are, you owe this community better if you're participating in it. Other people doing bad things is a poor non-excuse for setting this place on fire.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26938019
See? Don't criticize "celebrity CEOs," folks. You're breaking the code, and the insiders will circle the wagons if you do.
BTW, "Boober" is a direct quote said directly to a GQ reporter: https://www.gq.com/story/uber-cab-confessions
> I would like you to email me your contact information so that I never end up working anywhere near you. My email is in my profile.
I agreeing with the point you are making in that comment. However, I would happily flag any comment that makes disagreements unnecessarily personal in such a manner. It is the type of non-productive discourse that drags the whole conversation down.
I think it makes a lot of sense to vary eligibility criteria by vaccination site, and allow for anyone to be vaccinated at some of the sites. That way, anyone who meets special criteria can go to a site where the wait will be shorter, and anyone who doesn't meet any particular criteria still have a place where they can go to get it provided they are willing to endure the potentially long wait. As the rollout progresses, if some of the "special criteria" sites are not too busy, they can change to become "anyone" sites.
Overall, the problem of "too many people want the vaccine ASAP" is a great problem to have.
Also would like to point out: I'm not defending anyone - my initial reactions largely agree with the sentiment here, but it's 240 or 180 characters at most. It's not a news story or a comprehensive view. Let's take a moment to step back and acknowledge that before we devolve into the wars we seem to be criticizing so strongly.
If you read something on a private discussion forum and then blast it out publicly on twitter, don't be shocked when you get kicked out of that forum.
It sorta doesn't matter how righteous your cause was, it is just going to be automatic.
I know people that have been fired from the company they work for over a similar kind of offense. If you've signed a confidentiality agreement then you do not have the right of freedom to tweet without repercussions.
EDIT: Nevermind, I guess this was all something that happened back in March. Interesting that this controversy arose now.
This is a moral character issue. I try to avoid those who don't have it and doing that is more than proof enough for me they don't.
Some people are getting upset about people skipping the elegibility criteria.
Its a story about poor Governement communication to the masses.
But those things do seem to be growing rapidly as a fraction of overall mind share.
The governor opened up vaccines for everyone on April 15.
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2021/04/15/all-californians-16-now-el...
A.) The person posting about how to lie to jump the vaccine queue
B.) The second person posting about how to lie to jump the vaccine queue
C.) The moderators of the forum who allow posts to exist that describe how to like to jump the vaccine queue
D.) The person bringing this behavior to light
Pretty sure it's not D...
Especially if he was being factual, there's an element of legit whistle-blowing there, it's a bad look, YC.
https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Apaulg%20%22cancel%20cult...
These things happen when you don’t practice what you preach, inconsistencies create drama.
A CEO who's smart enough to get their vaccine early should be acknowledged for their cleverness -- wouldn't you want that kind of smarts running a company??
I guess he would have been safer by refusing the vaccine -- oh, wait -- there's a different scarlet letter for that, right?
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/24/liver.transplant.priori...
The vaccine hesitancy rates in some communities were absurdly high. The justifications given for not vaccinating were equally ridiculous and uninformed. In that environment it’s completely morally justified to jump ahead.
Kind of dumb to be raising a stink over the issue anyhow. Just get shots in arms. After front-line medical workers it doesn't matter whose. Prioritizing the elderly was baloney. Hell, smokers were a priority group. How much more obvious does an intentional backdoor have to be? This guy probably shames people who bluff in Poker.
It may be too late but I would advise anyone to delete anything you wrote under your real name now. In 10 years you are going to get buried for what is normal today. They are coming for you.
What he did was wrong but in the 80s the info would have passed on to a small group at a pool party.
I certainly wouldn't have encouraged a group of wealthy or soon-to-be wealthy tech founders to lie for vaccine. "Hacking the system" has always implied a sort of robinhood ethos, at least to me, not just greed purely for its own sake. I guess it's easy to be confused when you were raised inside the bubble and everything is monopoly money.
I thought it was pretty much the same in most states.
Anyway, the vaccine is pretty much generally available today, comparable to getting a flu shot. In some places, you don't even need an appointment; just walk in.
> 1. I went to a neighborhood clinic in Oakland, CA that's literally next door to my house, I can see the church from my window. Paul lives in NYC which is on the opposite end of the country.
> 2. I asked them about eligibility and told them I don't clear CA guidelines. They told me it's first come, first served with an ID showing I am 18+.
I am not buying this. Why would they even go and ask for eligibility when they know very well they are not eligible?
The only reason would be to hope to find a loophole.
The whole vaccine situation in CA was an excellent test of character. They failed it.
Not surprised that a YC founder thinks that rules apply only to others and not themselves. The antisocial gene is strong in this one.
Indeed, many people early on advocated doing the criteria strictly by age (after healthcare workers), but the government decided to create carveouts largely for social equity reasons (https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-...).
It got to the point where, in February/March, the only people I knew were vaccinated were a bunch of young people who got vaccinated because they were in med school (or other medical affiliated school), even though they were studying remotely. And in many cases you didn't even need to "lie" to skip the line because nobody even checked for proof you were eligible.
