/AI1d ago

Y Combinator's Garry Tan deletes promotional posts for Paxel after controversy over the AI tool's local privacy claims

A Community Note revealed the tool uploads user data

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Original post
Garry Tan@garrytan#266inAI

We never said we don't upload any user data to the cloud. We said the code (file contents) specifically doesn't.

Paxel is here to help you, and over time as local models get better, we'll be able to do even more locally. Can't wait, tbh.

5:29 PM · Jun 6, 2026 · 19.6K Views
Sentiment

Many users welcomed YC's clarification that Paxel keeps source code local as an honest trust signal while others accused the organization of data harvesting and harshly criticized its leadership.

Pos
35.7%
Neg
64.3%
15 comments with sentiment.
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VIEWS138.4KBOOKMARKS241LIKES792RETWEETS21REPLIES33
Milo Smith@mil000

YC also deleted this post out of shame too. This is the middle of the end of YC.

18hViews 138.4KLikes 792Bookmarks 241
lost in latency@lostinlatencyX

@mil000 community notes cooked his ass 😂😂

15hViews 5.7KLikes 30
Josh@joshmanders

@mil000 I wish they'd delete Garry Tan from the internet

17hViews 2.3KLikes 29
CLAM@CLAM102

@mil000 This just shows if you spray and pray enough garbage all you need is a small percentage of real winners to make it make sense. Gray Tan can be epically retarded and YC will still win because the funded a few unicorns.

14hViews 5.1KLikes 15
julio@juemrami

@mil000 most obvious data farm. Its okay the only people who fell for this shit likely poisoned the collected dataset with their shitty code.

15hViews 2.8KLikes 13Bookmarks 1
prune@prune_9

@mil000 is it just me or did Garry lose a lot of weight

16hViews 6.8KLikes 8
thoughtcrime@thoughtcrime___

@mil000 my gbrain is tingling

17hViews 1.7KLikes 10
Samar Singh@samarknowsit

@mil000 True ! Tan is an idiot when it comes to technology, but in hype cycle everyone is an expert

14hViews 2.7KBookmarks 1
endorsi@EndorsiVal

@mil000

17hViews 5.5KLikes 3
CZ@codyzaz

@mil000 It was basically letting in a backdoor to your entire codebase lmao

15hViews 3.5KLikes 3
julio@juemrami

@EndorsiVal @mil000 ycomb dropped a 'tool' that analyzed how you interacted with your LLM harnesses by reading through all your chats (data perfect for RLHF suss-ily enough)

They said it all ran locally on docker and that your "code" never left your machine. But they were still harvesting chats

15hViews 138Likes 1Bookmarks 1
Alex Hovansky@Alex_TGH

@garrytan "derived data" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there lol

would rather u just led with this from day one?

1dViews 668Likes 2
oh brother@gursimran_p

@mil000 what was the start of the end

16hViews 6.1K
Tina@TinaJucyBlue

@garrytan wait so the defense is "we only upload *some* of your proprietary code to the cloud" — this is exactly how cursor lost enterprise deals last year

1dViews 583Likes 2
Negative Alpha Capital@NegativeC16495

@mil000 Maybe if their leader wasn’t such a pus who blocked any bit of criticism

15hViews 2.9KLikes 4
Silicon Sorcerer@hackradios

@gursimran_p @mil000 gbrain and the head of YC getting LLM psychosis

16hViews 217Likes 6
Ferbin@Ferbin08

@mil000 Deletion is terrible optics. But declaring YC dead feels premature. The real story: funding options exploded. YC's scarcity advantage just eroded. That's market competition, not collapse.

15hViews 1.8K
chirag@chiragdotxyz

@garrytan Good clarification. The issue wasn't whether data is uploaded, but what exactly gets uploaded.

1dViews 456Likes 1
Garry Tan@garrytan

@Alex_TGH It’s free don’t use it then

1dViews 527
Nova@NovaByArun

@garrytan what is the mechanism used to separate user data from code before paxel hits the cloud?

1dViews 313
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