Given the persistent, and intense criticism on HN of all things NSA since the original Snowden reveal, to say that your question is absurd would be putting it gently.

In fact I've seen no other platform that has had more negative + rational + informed discussion regarding the NSA than Hacker News.

It's not so absurd because all NSA articles dive off the front page when about 15 comments (or something of that nature) are reached.

To be fair, quite a lot of HN users honestly find NSA related articles to be more noise than signal, particularly when they lack technical details and can have the tendency to spiral into political arguments and blind conspiracy theory. One doesn't need to necessarily invoke the specter of government-driven censorship to explain that effect, given the way some stories can overwhelm the site.

Thank you for your comment. I Had not thought about it like that.

YCombinator is an American company which is required to obey the law and comply with the government. The 'spell' you're referring to is for the moment a matter of law.

So yes, they are under the spell of the NSA. That YC still exists and hasn't been pursued ala Lavabit suggests that any requests, if they have been received, have been complied with to the government's satisfaction.

If one doesn't trust Facebook, Google, etc on principle, there is no reason to trust YCombinator or any startup they fund, other than personal bias, because the same principles apply. No one would trust such a statement from another company. YC should be no different in that regard.

Although, as is mentioned elsewhere, HN itself doesn't keep much private data. It probably wouldn't be worth their time to do anything more than monitor this site and inject the occasional bit of propaganda.

">>Has Ycombinator come forth with a statement they are not under the spell of the NSA?"

Considering the existence of "Gag orders", would they even be allowed to tell us? It's not like HN even has any private data really. It's not an Email service, it's not Facebook with privacy-settings. All our comments are very public and as far as I can tell pretty anti-NSA. It would be crazy to think the NSA isn't watching this site. HN, Reddit and Twitter are like the most likely places an uprising would start from.

If you're worried about the email-address you signed up with on HN, just assume the NSA has it(and whatever IPaddress you login from) and go from there.

Not worried, just curious. I'm here with a direct link to my old blog with name and everything...

We can read the link, and we can read your comment. If Y Combinator is 'under the spell of the NSA', they aren't doing a very good job at it.

Or they don't care about moderating a tiny programmer website.

Something doesn't need to be 'big' or mainstream to have an impact. Quite the opposite I'd say. (And I think HN's impact as an influencer should not be underestimated).