It actually works in the opposite direction: we moderate HN threads less, not more, when YC startups are the story. Lots of past explanation: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....
That said, customer-support-of-last-resort threads have been so repetitive lately that we started downweighting them more in general.
I was going to link to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34320816 and then I saw that it was the reply I posted to you last time! Nothing has changed since then.
Any chance for a dedicated section?
Do you mean would we add a dedicated section on HN for 3rd party customer support issues? That's a legit question.
This is when it's particularly helpful to have only one thing we're optimizing for [1] because it means we can replace that question with another: would it make HN more intellectually interesting? The answer is clearly no, I think, because those threads tend to be so repetitive.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Knowing which company, that your live depends on, know how to make things right is crucial knowledge - thus the popularity of those threads IMO. When years of your life gets deleted in seconds, and the company starts ignoring you, that's the red flag that needs to be public. I'm not advocating for separate section, but the public have spoken - the popularity of those threads means it's crucial part of this community.
That's not how HN works. If it did, then the front page would be filled with sensationalism and rage and the same few hot topics repeated over and over—because those tend to get the most upvotes.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...