
Ask HN: Is Hacker News Being Astroturfed? - aboutruby
I saw a comment on Reddit that said recently astroturfers have started using a pattern that you can pretty much see everywhere.<p>&gt; [top comment]<p>&gt; &gt; [generic question about what to use&#x2F;buy?]<p>&gt; &gt; &gt; [link to a paid product that is very loosely related to the original subject]<p>(Sometimes even the [top comment] is left out if the astroturfers have figured how to make that second comment the top comment)<p>And I think that comment chain typically becomes part of a sophisticated upvote ring.
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greenyoda
If I see something like that, I flag it. If both the question and the answer
come from accounts with no history of stories or comments, it's almost
certainly spam. (They're not always newly-created accounts. Some spammers seem
to let their accounts sit around for a while before using them.)

Fortunately, I haven't seen too much of this on HN yet.

(To flag a comment, click on its time stamp [e.g., "10 minutes ago"] and
you'll see a "flag" link at the top, next to the "parent" link. If enough
people flag a comment, it will get killed.)

~~~
aboutruby
Thanks, been using Hacker News for many years and didn't know that's how you
flag comments.

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NathanKP
I'm sure this happens to some extent, but based on my experience as an
employee who interacts with people on social media as part of my role I also
think you are underestimating how many people legitimately ask questions on
Reddit / Hacker News / Twitter etc. I'm sure that there are some bad actors
out there that post a question as well as the answer and that use an upvote
ring to boost their comments for visibility, but there are also employees that
just respond to legitimate comments that they see on the internet.

As part of my role for Amazon Web Services I frequently respond to comments on
platforms like Reddit, Twitter, and Hacker News. When I see someone asking a
question about an AWS service, saying something inaccurate about AWS, or who
seems like they could legitimately benefit from some knowledge I can share
with them then I'll post a reply. You can check through my comment history if
you are interested, but here is a recent example of such an interaction:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19282477](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19282477)

There are quite a few people out there like me who monitor relevant
discussions and interact with people on social media websites as part of their
job role. I would never "astroturf", not only because its unethical, but also
because there is plenty of legitimate and relevant discussion that I can
contribute to when needed without needing to resort to creating artificial
questions.

------
dang
With questions like this, what we need most are links. Links. Links!

Otherwise there's nothing to look at and nothing to crack down on.

~~~
aboutruby
I didn't want to point at specific examples to see if other people recognized
the pattern but here is a few of them (actually could only recall one... I
will flag when I see them, but not sure it will get recognized as it's a
series of comments):

My top comment being highjacked:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19410185](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19410185)

While you are here, this comment is just linking to a paid tutorial for no
apparent reason other than self-promotion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19416821](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19416821)

I can only recall those because they are linked to my history, I don't
remember which thread the others were on.

I didn't look at their history and saw many more, it's just that yesterday I
saw a new one on a front page post and though it got out of hand.

~~~
savingthrow
The first one is just someone asking for a product recommendation, and someone
else giving a recommendation. Nothing about that looks like astroturfing.

The second one is from an account who doesn't push their tutorial in most
comments. A search for [author:vram22 gumroad] shows no submissions for that
domain, and a handful of comments.

It's fine for people on HN to push their product, so long as they don't do it
too much and so long as they're clear that it is their product.

If you really think something is being shilled it's far better to email the
mods to let them know than it is to start meta-threads.

~~~
aboutruby
The few times I emailed hn@ycombinator.com I didn't get any responses.

Anyway, I just wanted to see if others thought Hacker News was being
astroturfed, I never said those are sure case of astroturfing.

For example this one:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19419362](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19419362)

Ok looks like it might be, but then I have to check the comment history to
make sure this user is legitimate, which look like he is legitimate. So I
guess I have to check the comment history of every user that makes a link to a
paid product... sounds like a pain that could be automated.

Also, like for the commenters weirdly supporting China, I think the comment
history is made in such a way to disguise the nature of the account (otherwise
it would be too easy to figure it out, basic spam gets killed very quickly on
HN thankfully)

(edit: Looking at your history, your account is 4 years old with two comments
in this thread and one comment 4 years ago, may be a highjacked account)

~~~
dang
I only saw this now. I can't find any emails from the email address registered
to your account. We're pretty meticulous about responding to everyone who
contacts us with such concerns, so I'm wondering what could have been going on
there.

The link you included here looks completely innocuous to me.

Your China comment here is close to nationalistic flamebait (not allowed on
HN) and breaks the HN guideline against insinuating astroturfing without
evidence (please review
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)).
The overwhelming majority of the time, such insinuation are baseless—and they
do harm to this site and to commenters being unfairly accused. If anyone wants
a clear example, look at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358).
This is why we have such guidelines.

Finally, attacking the person you're replying to like that by casting
groundless aspersions on their posting history is a violation of HN's civility
rule. People are welcome to post here at whatever rate they feel like. They're
not incriminating themselves by doing so.

~~~
aboutruby
> We're pretty meticulous about responding to everyone who contacts us with
> such concerns, so I'm wondering what could have been going on there.

I'm talking about past experience with previous accounts.

> Please don't impute astroturfing or shillage. That degrades discussion and
> is usually mistaken. If you're worried about it, email us and we'll look at
> the data.

Ok, never saw this rule actually, thanks.

> Finally, attacking the person you're replying to like that by casting
> groundless aspersions on their posting history is a violation of HN's
> civility rule.

Yes, I never look at people's post history, not sure why I did. I also usually
never reply to other people's comments and should be more strict about that.

~~~
dang
It's possible your emails went to spam and we missed it. That's not so likely
though, especially since you say there were repeated cases. We look through
the spam bin and try to fish out all the HN-related emails.

More likely, if you emailed us repeatedly and didn't get a response, is that
your previous accounts were involved in some form of abuse and we didn't
believe that the emails were in good faith. Either that or it was 5+ years
ago, when pg was running HN and didn't have time to respond to emails like we
do.

~~~
aboutruby
It was a while ago, I don’t create new accounts for ban-escaping but for
privacy reasons.

------
personjerry
How do I use this information or buy my own astroturfing?

~~~
personjerry
In this article they mention some of the methods the astroturfers have used:
[https://www.latlmes.com/tech/affiliate-links-swamp-
popular-s...](https://www.latlmes.com/tech/affiliate-links-swamp-popular-
social-discussion-site-1)

------
ggm
I think its very likely any social-engagement web space which has a low
barrier to entry winds up being astroturfed. All of them.

The question would be how high (at any given point in time) the barrier to
entry has to be.

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idlewords
So... can anyone suggest a good paid alternative to Hacker News that isn't
being astroturfed?

~~~
whitepoplar
It doesn't directly compete with HN, but I'm really starting to like
[https://pinboard.in](https://pinboard.in), especially with archiving enabled.

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minimaxir
There's a _big_ difference between astroturfing and self-promotion. The latter
tends to get correctly downvoted.

~~~
savingthrow
Self promotion within limits is fine for HN. See, for example, this valued
contributor who posts links useful content they've created. Most of these
appear to have been upvoted, not downvoted.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=author:minimaxir%20minimaxir&s...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=author:minimaxir%20minimaxir&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

~~~
minimaxir
Rather in the context of the "link to a paid product" or a startup they own
without disclosing it, as the OP was implying. I should have clarified.

For comments linking to my own blog/projects, I very intentionally a) disclose
I've written it and b) try to only post it when it's extremely relevant to the
topic at hand.

~~~
savingthrow
Sure, but Parent poster is linking to accounts who are also making the same
disclosure. "Here's this product I ahve". And while I didn't look through the
entire posting history of the linked accounts, the mentions don't seem too
frequent.

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yummypaint
A similar thing sometimes happens in threads related to china

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ohithereyou
Of course it is. YC is a business, not a charity.

