HACKER Q&A
📣 pajuhaan

I submitted my startup(ShowHN)follow rules but it was flagged in seconds


Yesterday, I published my startup for the first time here with (Show HN) and before publishing, I read the rules related to it and checked several times that nothing was violated. In fact, the text pattern I wrote was quite similar to previous launches (Dropbox, WebFlow, etc.).

If someone does not like a startup, why should he flag it? Instead of leaving a comment!

Or do I have to collect a certain number of points before publishing?

After more than ten years of following YC and the startup school and reading PG blogs about startups and stories about lunching in HN .... It was really disappointing.

Samples: My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive (YC S07) Show HN: Codecademy.com, the easiest way to learn to code (YC S11) Show HN: Firebase, a scalable real-time backend (YC S11) Show HN: Webflow - Design responsive websites visually (YC S13)

My Post: [flagged] Show HN: Build, manage, and scale your ecommerce visually (selldone.com)


  👤 ColinWright Accepted Answer ✓
As best I can tell, you posted it, and then a brand new account replied to it three times in quick succession. This has all the hallmarks of someone submitting a "Thing" and then creating a fake account to boost its apparent popularity. It might not have been you, but it follows a familiar pattern that people really, really don't like.

So in part I suspect people thought it looked deeply suspicious, flagged the obvious spam replies, then moved on to flag the submission.

So if it was you doing that, now you know. If it wasn't you doing it, then you were simply unlucky.

EDIT: I've vouched for the original, but I suspect it won't get back onto the "New" page, so it won't get much traffic. At least you have the other submission now, and this one is no longer marked as "[Flagged][Dead]".


👤 graderjs
Because you are a new account, software probably automatically flagged it.

Not saying I will have more luck, but to help you I resubmitted as:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31538874


👤 brudgers
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