
Ask HN: Are robots running wild on HN? - xrd
I just made a comment on the article trending about the Sprint merger.<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20535872<p>I posted a comment that I felt was directly relevant, with a link to where the assertion was made. I did not add my commentary on the people involved.<p>Within seconds, it was downvoted. (I don&#x27;t care about the downvote.)<p>I was not intentionally trying to start a flame war. I made no comment that Trump was &quot;bad.&quot;<p>Is it possible that any comment with Trump in it would be downvoted by a robot account? I&#x27;ve noticed the same thing happening when the discussion is related to China, comments are immediately downvoted. (I would not have noticed this if I had not been so addicted to the reward of getting an upvote that I check several seconds after posting.)<p>Here are the guidelines I saw which could apply.<p>&gt; Eschew flamebait. Don&#x27;t introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.<p>&gt; Please don&#x27;t use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That destroys intellectual curiosity, which is what the site exists for.<p>I don&#x27;t care about HN being fair. It just seemed like a suspicious immediate downvote which could not have been from someone who actually read the article. I can understand someone doing a kneejerk downvote, but it would be really interesting if a discussion forum like HN turned into a place where public opinion about controversial topics could be molded and shaped. Possible?
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bjourne
The site's administrators have repeatedly stated that you can down vote for
any reason whatsoever. People have protested over the years but it is not
going to change. I therefore randomly down vote comments that I read. Because
spite is a reason. If enough users random vote the karma system breaks and
maybe the admins will fix it.

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NeedMoreTea
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments](https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments)

Is often a place to spot where the interesting discussions are. Especially
those with active discussion, but have dropped down or off the front page. I
doubt I'm the only one who checks that page reasonably regularly, and the
"new" submissions page - which is where I saw this question, not via "ask".

Equally it would allow someone to notice a comment they took issue with
immediately it was posted, and send some down vote love within a single
second.

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kazinator
Note that a downvoting robot on HN has to have a 500+ karma (or whatever is
the minimum now), like everyone else. You can't just create a throwaway
account, connect it to a robot, and start downvoting away.

That doesn't ensure robots can't happen, but it it puts quite a damper on any
rampancy.

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krapp
It's not outside the realm of possibility to organically build multiple
accounts that reach the karma limit eventually, then automate them.

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minimaxir
> Within seconds, it was downvoted. (I don't care about the downvote.)

The existence of this submission contradicts the parenthetical. :P

There are a lot of people on Hacker News: an "immediate" downvote is not
evidence of botting.

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xrd
You are correct. I do care about downvoting, but only because I think it is
important to have people downvoting things you say, otherwise you are living a
safe and boring life. I stand corrected (but I'm not sure that is what you
mean by "contradicting the parenthetical").

You are someone that cares about data and trends of data. One time happening
is not evidence nor a trend. But, I'm wondering if others have seen similar
things. The example I cited here seemed like a very quick reaction (which is
possible, people on all sides do that with Trump...). But, if it happens
often, especially about certain topics, wouldn't that be interesting?

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xrd
And, if a comment is downvoted just a few times, it effectively hides that
comment, right? There is not much of a threshold to control a conversation
with a few robot accounts, right?

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gus_massa
A comment must get to get many downvotes before it is killed and hidden. [1]

The site has protections against voting rings [1], I guess it has protections
against downvoting rings [1].

If you have a clear example, try to email the mods so they take a look
hn@ycombinator.com

I (and many other users) upvote grey comments when they are not offensive or
very wrong. (I also try not to downvote grey comments unless they are very
offensive or extremely wrong.) So to kill the comment it is necessary to use
even more robots.

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Udik
Slightly off-topic, but I keep thinking that downvoting should only be
possible together with a comment stating the reason for the downvote.

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detaro
That sounds like a surefire way of creating large discussions around bad
comments, instead of moving them out of the way.

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Udik
Downvoted comments (and threads) can be still moved to the bottom.

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necovek
But I am not a robot. Really.

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cerberusss
Fellow humans, I acknowledge the above assertion: he is totally not a robot.

