That doesn't mean we don't moderate at all, just less. For example, in this case, the repost was obviously a dupe by a large margin, so we marked it as a dupe. But when people complained about that, we were more likely to bend the rules because Gitlab is a YC startup. If it were an unrelated company, we would have been more likely to say something like "look you guys, this is standard practice and it's not a borderline call" and left the repost marked as a duplicate.
I suspect dang knows there will always be people that accuse him of conspiring with YC companies, and the best thing he can do is to just keep doing his job.
I also suspect dang knows that majority of people on HN are grateful for his moderation services.
