Saying YC employees have boosted stats implies that HN boosts those stats inherently. But that's not true. What happens is the same as what happens when people post their HN submissions on twitter/Facebook and tell all their friends about their HN post.

I guess it depends on if you think that things that boost behaviours inherently are included or if only software counts. I see it more akin to if some users submissions were automatically tweeted whereas others had to copy and paste.

I didnt realise they had taken out the alerts on their dashboards that led to YC members being picked up by the vote ring detection.