Well, the username `fleaflicker` could fit an account that someone uses to respond to people who annoy them, and who they think are parasites and far beneath them.
But it's not necessarily an alt of Altman. HN has a lot of people who'd say that, and a lot of people who'd like to smack those people and other people, and also the normal (old-school) Internet levels of trolling.
at this point it's beyond clear that assigning even the most cynical motives you can imagine to anything Altman does is likely underplaying what's really going on
Generally, these cloak-and-dagger companies just vanish especially industry where is fierce competition because cloak-and-dagger stuff takes just too much energy from the north start. I would not be surprised if 2025 GPT-5 still is not out and OpenAI just drops the whole model + number concept and just starts calling it to gpt.
Calling it GPT just like Apple calling it "the iPad" is something you can do when you basically have no competition. OpenAI faces competition from all sides so they need the numbering game for now.
Hate to break it to you, but this is how C suite looks like in every bigger company, you don't even need to go multinational or S&P 500.
Now I am not saying everybody is exactly same, there is variation, but within the shades of grey. Same as politics - think about all the hard battles they had to fight for decades, how could a decent honest person not only survive that but also come out on top of all others? At the end, with right kind of eyes you can find pretty simple logic everywhere.
Ah, I see. So, what they're suggesting is that, nine years later, he's either done the exact same thing, is about to do it, or is in the process of doing it. It feels like a repeat of the past, almost like we're watching the same playbook unfold again.
Altman is basically a younger Elon. He failed to build his own company Loopt, already has disturbing allegations against him from a family member who I absolutely believe, and lied under oath.
I expect grand promises, nothing delivered, and a personal enrichment agenda that harnesses a cult of idiots while ruthlessly silencing/bankrupting critics.
One thing that successful people are often good at is taking their good luck and portraying it as a genius master-stroke of planning that no-one could have foreseen.
Claiming to have actually engineered the string of leadership crises that engulfed Reddit is a bit far-fetched, and I suspect just bragging and taking credit for something that just happened.
Did they ultimately benefit from those crises? Clearly, they were opportunistic.
But actually engineering that as some kind of master-plan comes across to me as an attempt to puff up their ego.
It comes across as sociopathic regardless of how much is fact or fiction.
> Claiming to have actually engineered the string of leadership crises that engulfed Reddit is a bit far-fetched.
I've personally observed such engineered crises and the stakes were considerably smaller in these cases; if you have a sufficiently Machiavellian set of people at hand, you'll observe the kind of coups and tug of wars that you see here.
How odd. Since yesterday I've bin thinking about him, that he might become the greatest con man of the century. Something along the lines, that, once OpenAI has archived AGI, he will keep it to himself in the sense that it will only be able to do what he wants us to be able to do with it, and to shape it so that it benefits him and only him.
Then there's also the possibility that, if he starts to feel "not liked" by the population, that he'll go into full Elon Musk mode and use his power to become the greatest pal of Elon and Trump and use the tools to suppress what he doesn't like, as a retaliation for the lack of love. If you look at his interviews, he barely shows friendly emotions, as if he's got some empathy-problem.
He wants to be the next Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates. But all his endeavors have this feeling of him taking advantage of real hackers to steal the spotlight. Like, he is the smallest contributor for the success of ChatGPT but became the face of OpenAI globally.
Not coincidentally, since many people more important than him left OpenAI, they lost the lead in LLMs development and Claude/Anthropic seems to be growing way faster.
I find it sad the current generation of techno-rich people. We had Jobs and Gates , who ultimately were geeks of their trades. Then (next gen) we have Bezos, Zuckerberg who, are still a geek by heart, but also a bit of sociopaths.
Now you have Musk, Altman... who plainly are full batshit crazy.
> ... once OpenAI has archived AGI, he will keep it to himself in the sense that it will only be able to do what he wants us to be able to do with it, and to shape it so that it benefits him and only him.
Once? Let's first worry about "if" rather than "when".
But if it does... the thing about AGI is that it will decide for itself what it wants to do. It won't be controlled like that by Altman or anyone else.
If you click the link under his message that says 'parent', you can see the comment he is replying to. I don't think there's a way to see both at once very easily because of the number of replies the parent comment has.
So from what I understand, what they're suggesting is that, nine years later, he's either done the exact same thing, is about to do it, or is in the process of doing it. It feels like a repeat of the past, almost like we're watching the same playbook unfold again.
With 144 points, this story suddenly went from being ~#12 on the front page to now being #70, on page 3. If any journalists or regulators are reading this I recommend that possible astroturfing behavior (collusive downvoting (flagging)) be investigated, and I'm happy to cooperate with any investigation if contacted.
As it happens with every discussion touching on sufficiently sensitive skin ("offending" some people, countries, etc.). One can't imagine that an article trashing a former president of Y Combinator will survive well especially on HN where burying any discussion in the "flagged" category is absolutely trivial.
It doesn't mean the information in any of these articles is true or false, just that the mere existence of the discussion offends, so it's promptly pushed under the table through a voting system that is exceptionally ripe for abuse.
Nearly simultaneously, the comment in this thread which explains what Yishan was saying suddenly dropped from being the #1 comment to being below a bunch of other comments, which makes this whole thread harder to understand unless you scroll down. This is despite the comment having 17 points and high engagement.
The fact that these two things which both benefit Sam happened simultaneously (the story dropping from the front page and the explanatory comment dropping from the top of the comments) is suggestive of collusive downvoting/flagging and once again I want to state that I have screenshots showing this playing out minute by minute and I am happy to collaborate with journalists or regulators.
Ah, I see. So, what they're suggesting is that, nine years later, he's either done the exact same thing, is about to do it, or is in the process of doing it. It feels like a repeat of the past, almost like we're watching the same playbook unfold again.
If I understand the history correctly, Yishan (the former Reddit CEO) is talking about himself when he talks about a CEO in this story, and so Yishan's post is a brag, with a thin denial tacked on at the end. That's why I believe that Sam (Yishan's friend) is also engaging in thinly-veiled bragging about these events.
Here is Yishan's comment with his name spelled out for clarity instead of just saying "CEO":
In 2006, reddit was sold to Conde Nast. It was soon obvious to many that the sale had been premature, the site was unmanaged and under-resourced under the old-media giant who simply didn't understand it and could never realize its full potential, so the founders and their allies in Y-Combinator (where reddit had been born) hatched an audacious plan to re-extract reddit from the clutches of the 100-year-old media conglomerate.
Together with Sam Altman, they recruited a young up-and-coming technology manager [named Yishan Wong] with social media credentials. Alexis, who was on the interview panel for the new reddit CEO, would reject all other candidates except this one. The manager was to insist as a condition of taking the job that Conde Nast would have to give up significant ownership of the company, first to employees by justifying the need for equity to be able to hire top talent, bringing in Silicon Valley insiders to help run the company. After continuing to grow the company, [Yishan Wong] would then further dilute Conde Nast's ownership by raising money from a syndicate of Silicon Valley investors led by Sam Altman, now the President of Y-Combinator itself, who in the process would take a seat on the board.
Once this was done, [Yishan Wong] and his team would manufacture a series of otherwise-improbable leadership crises, forcing the new board to scramble to find a new CEO, allowing Altman to use his position on the board to advocate for the re-introduction of the old founders, installing them on the board and as CEO, thus returning the company to their control and relegating Conde Nast to a position as minority shareholder.
JUST KIDDING. There's no way that could happen.
-- yishanwong
My understanding of what Sam meant by "I could never have predicted the part where you resigned on the spot" was that he was conveying respect for Yishan essentially out-playing Sam at the end (the two of them are friends) by distancing himself (Yishan) from the situation and any potential liability in order to leave Sam "holding the bag" of possible liability.
What a great con! They conned Conde Nast into turning Conde Nast's (reported) $20 million investment into billions of dollars for Conde Nast. Sam Altman is a genius, Conde Nast are such fools!
Depriving any party of any portion of their free will & their right to voluntarily consent is still a con, even if it's for (ostensibly) their own benefit.
There's a reason that informed consent is required for medical procedures, even lifesaving ones.
Informed consent is the process in which a health care provider educates a patient about the risks, benefits, and alternatives of a given procedure or intervention. The patient must be competent to make a voluntary decision about whether to undergo the procedure or intervention. Informed consent is both an ethical and legal obligation of medical practitioners in the US and originates from the patient's right to direct what happens to their body.
I know that it's a stretch to apply medical ethics to business deals but I believe the principle of informed consent is still a moral requirement. An example of how this is the intent in many legal systems is the concept of a "meeting of the minds" being a mandatory part any legally valid contract. "Meeting of the minds" is similar to the idea of informed consent:
You're accepting that the "con" was a con. For the con to be a con (consensual or otherwise) we have to believe that Conde Nast were willing to give up their majority stake without knowing that it would lead to the company being worth billions. If they didn't think giving up their majority stake would benefit them, why did they do it? The entire premise of the con is that Conde Nast were simultaneously too stupid to realise that there was a path to success for reddit but also willing to give up their majority stake based on the need to hire some people?
You’re missing my point. I’m suggesting there was no con. The “manufacture[d] leadership crises” were not manufactured. Reddit was sold to Conde Nast, it struggled due to lack of investment, a plan was put forward to rescue it, Conde Nast consented to the plan. If Reddit was struggling due to underinvestment why would crises need to be manufactured? Everyone on Reddit back then recognised that it was a shit show due to underinvestment. Reddit continued to struggle for years after the “con” because it takes a long time to fix underlying issues, if the crises were manufactured, then a post-“con” reddit would have been wonderful and stable but it wasn’t.
Altman and co. benefit from reframing the history of reddit as a grand genius conspiracy.
This is bordering on fraud no? SBF is in prison despite making good investments with his ill gotten funds. That does not make him less culpable. Sam Altman and his cadre are the distillation of everything wrong with the Valley. It would seem you need to be spineless to work with these people.
That tracks. It could also explain why Ellen Pao was next in line, had a fairly brief stay before another "leadership crisis", and was subsequently replaced by Reddit cofounder Steve Huffman.
I don't quite understand the last paragraph. Why would Yishan the CEO manufacture crises and outed himself? Was he (at this point) an ally in Sam's con or victim?
You can't post personal attacks to HN, regardless of which person you have a problem with. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. No more of this, please.
Yes, it would be the same in the case of anybody else.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules, we'd appreciate it. We've had to warn you more than once before, and it looks like you've been continuing to break them.
Another post which is on the front page with fewer points and older / more stale time is "Writing Portable Rendering Code with Nvrhi" with 5 points from 3 hours ago.
To be clear, I do not believe that the HN moderators are doing anything wrong, but rather that Sam or his friends use a lot of accounts to flag anything bad about him, suppressing those posts.
It's a throwaway snarky Reddit comment from 9 years ago whose only interest is that it feeds into the hottest celebrity ragefest of the moment. That's a model of offtopicness for HN!
I fully agree that users flagged it. What I would appreciate would be if you can please check the data to see if there is a small group of users who consistently flag all negative things about Sam Altman. I suspect the answer is yes.
It is not a throwaway snarky comment, it is an explanation by Yishan and Sam of how they hijacked control of a team away from Condé Nast using a similar playbook as Sam is using in recent years + now to seize control of OpenAI.
This is not about celebrities and I have zero interest in celebrity news. This is about ensuring legal and transparent governance of the nonprofit OpenAI which is among the most likely teams in the world to initiate the Singularity and thus either uplift or obliterate humanity. There aren’t any higher stakes than this.
It would be very wonderful if you could please check the data to see if there are some users who consistently flag content about Sam Altman but don’t really flag other stuff very much. Please.
While we’re on the topic of a small clique of users flagging content about Sam Altman, the fact that I’m one of the accounts who consistently posts things exposing his personality and his past has led to my posts being flagged so many times that my account is in a hellban/shadowban status where any posts I make are automatically flagged by default now but do not appear flagged when logged in as me. This doesn’t affect my comments, just my posts. I understand that I’ve had other posts flagged that weren’t about Sam Altman and that I’ve been a borderline annoying user for some time and I apologize for this.
But if you look at the chronological history of my account, you will see that the hellban/shadowban did not start until I started posting things about Sam Altman. I would deeply appreciate if you could please request a review of this status to clear this status from my account because I believe it was deliberately caused by a small group of pro-Sam users flagging things I posted, and amounts to a form of social ostracism.
I appreciate your help and you’re a good man in a crappy situation. None of this is your fault and I’m just trying to raise awareness so that we don’t end up with a potentially greed-motivated, emotionally abusive man at the helm of the Singularity. (Many people who have worked with him have said these things about him.)
Thank you for everything you do for our community and we appreciate you.
There's no brigade of users, as far as I can tell, flagging negative things about Sam Altman, and anyway the concern doesn't pass the smoke test because there is tons of negative content about Sam on HN. Just look at the latest thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41665045. The recent discussions are practically bloodbaths. If you're concerned about a shortage of negative content about Sam on HN, you have nothing to worry about. The problem is that most of these extra submissions, like the current one, aren't interesting—they're just piling on to an already hyper-discussed ragefest. HN is supposed to be for intellectually interesting conversation, which that is not.
Since you asked for data, I looked at the flagging histories of all the users who flagged the current submission. There's no particular focus on Sam stories. Here's a representative sample of other things the same users have flagged:
I did not downvote your post, but please also note the following from the HN guidelines:
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
