I dunno, I am commenting on it mainly because I find the intensity of the anger and accusations of bad faith to be pretty out of proportion with what's actually happening, and I kind of value pushing back on such things to try to moderate the tone of the discussion (not as a devil's advocate thing per se, but more I am more likely to comment if I feel like the average vibe is unreasonable).
replyThe HN guidelines specifically ask you not to do what you're doing, and say what to do if you have a genuine concern:
reply> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
Huh, I didn't recall that. FWIW I have e-mailed them in the past and gotten detected abusers banned, but didn't this time because it's just a suspicion. Didn't realise posting about hunches was against the guidelines, though, that's my mistake.
replyI'm not sure that HN is that influential that buying up a few accounts would matter. To what end?
replyIf you can increase your reach, why not do it? Also, HN has better reputation among tech circles than Reddit and is less niche than other resources. Modern marketing hits everything.
replyHN is enormously influential for programmers and employees within the tech industry. Who happen to be exactly who Anthropic, and other AI companies, desperately need adoption from...
replyI think HN has an outsized influence in the industry, for its size. There are a lot of big tech employees and startup founders reading it. Account purchasing absolutely happens, I've discovered and gotten banned at least a dozen years-old accounts that were blatantly sold and puppeteered by bots in the past. The comments aren't obviously bot-written this time around, so I can't conclusively prove it happened in this case, but it is a thing that happens in general and something to be aware of. There's also vote selling to promote things onto the front page. Given how cheap shilling on HN is, and the fact that many will perceive it to be organic while always viewing straightforwards ads skeptically, I wouldn't be surprised if the cost:effectiveness ratio probably beats any other form of advertising.
replyhn appears in google news now
reply> I've seen a lot of what seems to be inorganic defense of this, including one post from an account that hasn't posted in over a year.
replyIt’s just a standard Pavlovian response of a bootlicker, it can also be triggered if you mention “tax the rich” and “regulate AI hyperscalers”.