Dan has said repeatedly that YC companies do not get artificial boosts. He's said that on this thread, as well. Ranking is definitely not a strict function of votes; HN does a bunch of stuff to groom the front page. But, according to Dan, none of that involves giving preference to YC companies.
I have no knowledge except what I read here, but this is obviously false. Or perhaps not obviously but at least suspiciously. As apparent by the "_YC_STARTUP_ is hiring" posts, that don't even take comments, as well as the "work at a startup" (YC's hiring portal) posts, that are commonly on the front page. Without publication of the ranking algorithm, I would be _very_ hard pressed to believe these are organic. I mean even if all YC alums mass voted for those topics, vs the total number of users voting that has to be a small fraction.
So there are at least a couple classes of topics that seem to be artificially promoted, in preference of YC companies.
The specific types of posts that are treated specially are well documented, including in this thread. It's 'suspicious' mostly because you (seemingly) haven't had a chance to look into it.
I didn't mean 'suspicious' with a negative connotation, just to be clear. Indeed, I didn't care enough to look it up, ie I could care less how posts are ranked. That's YC and HN's business. I have nothing at stake.
Given this well documented information, and my basic belief that the principals here aren't sociopaths, I see no reason to believe Stripe posts would be artificially promoted, well normal SEO (done right) aside.
But, even though I don't really "care", I do think it's great that HN has so many defenders of their impartiality. I can't really tell how many are insiders but it feels like most (all but 1 or 2) are just regular users. It speaks highly of HN and is worth defending. HN ain't perfect, that's for sure, but I know I couldn't make it better. [well i would get rid of the newish prev and next links -- they make the byline a bit long on mobile. i prefer folding, so when i free scroll i can see better where i was. that's not the kind of better i am referring to. just a throwaway complaint]
Yes, the YC startup is hiring posts work differently than other posts on the front page, they're also explained in the FAQ ("Can I post a job ad?" and "What's the relationship between YC and HN?").
The grandparent comment of your comment also called this out, so I'm assuming the post you replied to assumed that those weren't worth calling out in their statement.
