The rule is "we moderate less, not more, when YC or a YC startup is the story". In other words, we do moderate such stories, we just do less (usually a lot less) than we would if it were a different topic. I posted a longer explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41732846 and there are 10 years' worth of similar explanations here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....