Ask HN: Why was this Airbnb HN post that hit 15 votes in 30 minutes removed?
We buried it because the article was hard-paywalled, i.e. paywalled without workarounds. That&#x27;s the policy on HN: paywalls with workarounds are ok, those without are not [1, 2, 3].<p>I emailed The Information to ask if they&#x27;d unlock it for HN readers, like they&#x27;ve done in the past [4]. They were nice enough to do so. I changed the HN link to the unlocked URL, posted about it in the thread [5], and unburied the submission.<p>In the future, can you please follow the site guidelines [6], which ask you to email us questions like this instead of posting submissions about them? There&#x27;s nearly always a simple explanation. But if you post about it on HN, the thread will fill up with complex (often sinister) speculation that doesn&#x27;t inform anybody, is off-topic, and takes time to properly reply to. Also, we often have no idea that the post exists. I only found out about this one because someone emailed to ask if we were planning to reply.<p>By the way: that article, though a good piece of reporting, is not a good HN submission. The fact that a company is making cutbacks is not an &quot;interesting new phenomenon&quot; right now [6], it&#x27;s a dog-bites-man story. Since there&#x27;s nothing intellectually interesting, the thread is guaranteed to be just another generic discussion [7] about Airbnb and&#x2F;or the covid crisis. Normally, we&#x27;d downweight such an article off the front page, because when there is a flood of stories about a major ongoing topic (like this crisis), we prioritize the ones with significant new information [8]. But if we applied normal moderation in this case, people would accuse us of burying the story because it is about Airbnb. So a different rule takes precedence: we moderate HN less, not more, when YC or its startups are involved [9]. That&#x27;s why we left the thread on the front page. Doing that makes HN less interesting, but the integrity of the site is more important, and this is one way we try to protect it.<p>If, after reading all this, anyone has a question I haven&#x27;t answered, let me know and I&#x27;ll be happy to address it.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsfaq.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsfaq.html</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10178989" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10178989</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=false&amp;query=by:dang paywalls&amp;sort=byDate&amp;type=comment" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=false&amp;qu...</a><p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=true&amp;query=by:dang "the information" unlock&amp;sort=byDate&amp;type=comment" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=true&amp;que...</a><p>[5] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=22708065" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=22708065</a><p>[6] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html</a><p>[7] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=false&amp;query=by:dang generic discussion&amp;sort=byDate&amp;type=comment" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=false&amp;qu...</a><p>[8] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=22527396" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=22527396</a><p>[9] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=false&amp;query=by:dang moderate less not more yc&amp;sort=byDate&amp;type=comment" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=false&amp;qu...</a>