Top all-time · #1987
Mandy Brown
Personal blog · aworkinglibrary.com/writingculturewriting
Mandy Brown writes A Working Library, a personal blog at aworkinglibrary.com about culture and writing. Since 2010, 37 different Hacker News readers have linked it 50 times, most often “Accountability sinks”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (12) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers mostly cite Mandy Brown's "Accountability Sinks" essay on organisations that absorb blame, which builds on Dan Davies' book. A few also link her posts on audience and tech unions.
- Recommended for · 2 comments
- Called a "great blog post" on audience, and urged readers to read the tech union post.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 12 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A working library is a project about work, reading & technology by mandy brown.
Most-linked posts?
- Accountability sinks11 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2024-10-19
- Coming Home3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-09-28
- Artificial intelligence is not a technology2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-05-30
- A Unified Theory of Fucks2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-01-26
- Designed to Be Specialists2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-02-19
- Reading is the art of attention. What a mess we've made of that word2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-07-13
What Hacker News says?
"Accountability Sinks" https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/accountability-sinks
Comment linking /writing/accountability-sinks
on “Cloudflare Global Network experiencing issues”Submitted Accountability sinks as a story · 517 points
HN discussionhttps://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/accountability-sinks
Comment linking /writing/accountability-sinks
on “Armed police swarm student after AI mistakes bag of Doritos for a weapon”Submitted Against Optimization as a story · 21 points
HN discussionVisa, Mastercard, payment processors, banks, etc act as accountability sinks[0] for governments and political group by design . They are arbiters for moving/blocking money, not taking principled stances; there is no net neutrality equivalent for financial networks. There's a lot of wasted discussion talking about an intentional design decision because they're arguing from consumers' perspectives, ignoring the huge b…
Comment linking /writing/accountability-sinks
on “Visa and Mastercard are getting overwhelmed by gamer fury over censorship”Submitted A Unified Theory of Fucks as a story · 10 points
HN discussionRelated discussion (517 pts): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41891694 https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/unaccountability-machine (A very short overview of Dan Davies' book, quoted in TFA, that came up with the term) EDIT: complementing book mentioned in that thread Cathy O'Neil's "Weapons of Math Destruction" (2016, Penguin Random House) is a good companion to this concept, covering the "accountability sink"…
Comment linking /reading/unaccountability-machine
on “Accountability Sinks”Submitted A Unified Theory of Fucks as a story · 7 points
HN discussionDan Davies wrote a whole book on this topic, The Unaccountability Machine [1]. In it, he creates the concept of "accountability sinks": organisational structures or systems which abstract the source of a decision away from individuals so that no specific person can be held accountable. Davies writes: "For an accountability sink to function, it has to break a link; it has to prevent the feedback of the person affecte…
Comment linking /writing/accountability-sinks
on “Blame as a Service”Submitted Legalese as a story · 6 points
HN discussionAccountability sinks are a huge issue with large corporations. The people you can reach are not allowed to act due to policies and processes, and the people setting the policies are not reachable to a regular customer - nor would they change the policies just to accommodate one out of their millions of users https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/accountability-sinks
Comment linking /writing/accountability-sinks
on “The dark side of account bans”Submitted Artificial intelligence is not a technology as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThe most maddening part about this experience is the helplessness. Its inconvenient, sure. Ive been late because of traffic, etc. Being carried along well beyond my will without a breakglass: Fine, I'll just walk! option makes my skin crawl. Events like this seem to only be explained by accountability sink[0]. Naming it gives me some brief sense of sanity. I appreciate that there is a safety concern; where's the hum…
Comment linking /writing/accountability-sinks
on “Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn”Submitted Making a Career in Dictatorship as a story · 3 points
HN discussionMandy Brown from A Working Library had a great blog post on this to emphasize your point: http://aworkinglibrary.com/library/archives/on_audience/ .
Comment linking /library/archives/on_audience/
on “My Experience as a Single Founder”Submitted Reading Matters Deeply as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI think my problem with codes of conduct is that, in my experience, they're usually just accountability sinks[1]. e.g. "all violations must be reported to the committee" => "we will forbid anyone taking action without the committee's prior approval, and insist that disclosing any reports to us is a violation of policy, then refuse to take any action on reports". So a thing that was supposed to explicitly communicate…
Comment linking /writing/accountability-sinks
on “Eric S. Raymond to the OSS community on codes of conduct: Refuse to have one”Submitted Toolmen as a story · 3 points
HN discussionGonna recommend folks read https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/you-deserve-a-tech-union Very much believe that unions, and power to the workers, are very important!
Comment linking /reading/you-deserve-a-tech-union
on “When will tech workers start creating Unions?”Submitted The Case for Rereading as a story · 3 points
HN discussionPOSIWID [0] and Accountability Sinks [1] territory, I'm sure LLMs will become the beating hearts of corporate systems designed to do something profitably illegal with deniability. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha... [1] https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/accountability-sinks
Comment linking /writing/accountability-sinks
on “Frontier AI agents violate ethical constraints 30–50% of time, pressured by KPIs”Submitted You keep using that word as a story · 3 points
HN discussion>In The Unaccountability Machine, Dan Davies argues that organizations form “accountability sinks,” structures that absorb or obscure the consequences of a decision such that no one can be held directly accountable for it. Here’s an example: a higher up at a hospitality company decides to reduce the size of its cleaning staff, because it improves the numbers on a balance sheet somewhere. Later, you are trying to che…
Comment linking /writing/accountability-sinks
on “Claude Is Not Your Architect. Stop Letting It Pretend”Submitted Reading is the art of attention. What a mess we've made of that word as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Accountability Sinks as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Toolmen as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Make Life Possible as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Storytelling as Practice as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted What are we making together? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Coming Home as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
