please don't let that boil over into accusations against specific people unless you can strictly demonstrate what you're saying.
I realized that I’m using stronger verbiage here than in the article on my website. I haven’t updated the article in some time. If I recall correctly, it doesn’t contain any evidence/proof that explicitly contradicts specifically what he told me in the linked HN thread. I will update the article, and keep in mind the contents of your comment. Out of legitimate curiosity, at what level in the org chart is it okay to say that someone lied? We can say that the CEO lied. Matt was a senior employee who was also very public: he was the face of Google’s ranking algorithms.
Keep in mind that the word "lie" is strong medicine. It implies not only that someone said something untrue but that they deliberately intended to deceive.
So from what I can tell, if someone writes an article about an employee of a company, people can say whatever they like in the comment section - anecdotes as colleagues, stories of similar environments, a mix of facts and claims. The article in question may be mostly heresy, and we've seen in the past this happen with the likes of Bezos, or very public people within our field like Stallman, or founders with questionable morals (see the latest AI controversies, or ads, or hacking, or regulations)..
But as soon as we specifically name someone in the comments, it's considered a witch-hunt. I think this is only true the first time it happens, or prior to them being targeted outside of this community.
Once someone writes a blog post with at least some facts on the subject, or the mainstream media writes about them - suddenly they're fair-game.
dang, we know this isn't going to get any easier to moderate. And I think writing broad, sweeping rules around this won't work. However, could you possibly write a post about it? You've expanded in the comments section in response to my own failure to live up to these standards (sorry again!), which I think was a good amount of information.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23306743
I think it could be good for some community self-reflection, and to see where the line of discourse vs gossip sits today.
That's an extreme thing to say and crosses into personal attack. The thread you seem to be referring to (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5418864) doesn't seem to support what you've said here. At a minimum, you're breaking the site guideline which says: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I'm not saying your claims about Google and your site are false—I have no idea; it sounds like you have every right to be frustrated. Also, I don't know Matt. But these sorts of accusations ought not to be slung carelessly on HN. Since we're trying to have a site that staves off internet-default outcomes, we all need to be careful about this.
I have experience with these dynamics in the HN context and can tell you that people jump to conclusions all the time about why they were penalized or banned. Their conclusions are almost always wrong and overly dramatized. Frequently they take to the forum to declaim about how badly they were treated, and they always put it in strikingly specific and factual-sounding terms, as if they know for sure. But they don't know for sure; in fact they don't know at all. They've just completely made it up.
The HN context is simpler and has lower stakes than Google. (At least here, people can get factual answers to specific questions if they ask.) But that only strengthens the point: these domains are complicated and the dramatic explanations that people come up with out of frustration are almost always wrong. Of course it's frustrating is Google has penalized your site, but please don't let that boil over into accusations against specific people unless you can strictly demonstrate what you're saying.