alt Hacker News> Hacker news is there to promote ycombinator companies
I should probably clarify this a bit.
It's true that HN sponsors Launch HNs (and Show HNs) by YC startups. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. However, YC would not be funding HN if that were the only reason for it. It's a secondary factor.
Far more important than promoting existing startups is attracting founders who might start new startups. This requires an entirely different strategy than promotion: it requires being interesting enough to attract the right kind of users. That's why the site is organized around curiosity, as I explained elsewhere in the current thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46309399).
For more on this, here are past explanations:
optimizing for curiosity - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
relationship between HN and YC's business interests - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
I interpreted their comment more along the lines of
“Don’t critique ycombinator companies or go against their interests, otherwise you’re fine”
YC companies and their founders have special privileges on here and there is an opaque moderation system. There is no data you could provide beyond full transparency into your entire organization(obviously not happening) that would convince anyone that there isn’t influence that they have over communication here