3 ms·

Sadly it's true. Some companies game the HN ranking algo, and employ shills to divert the discussion of their product. At least two companies (that are infamous

by frik 10y ago

Sadly it's true. Some companies game the HN ranking algo, and employ shills to divert the discussion of their product. At least two companies (that are infamous for such shady tactics anyway) do it actively regularly on HN. The first thing to prevent it, would be to change the HN ranking algo so that stories with more comments than votes are not automatically punished and forced many pages backwards from the frontpage. Add a report button to report users. Implement an admin interface to monitor certain users and ban them.

whitepoplar 10y ago
Please name these companies!
- cowpig 10y ago
  this--plus evidence too if you can find it please!
- randomname2 10y ago
  This probably refers to Uber and Peter Thiel and companies associated to him? If they're manipulating HN they're not very good at it. Lately I'm seeing smear pieces against them appear on the front page on almost a daily basis and the tone in these threads is overwhelmingly toxic rather than positive.
wickawic 10y ago
I could be wrong but I felt this happened on the Spotify thread that is currently on the front page. All the inital reaction was negative, about how the piece was a 'submarine,' etc. Now the top 5 comments are about Spotify's new killer feature and how happy the customers are...
- dang 10y ago
  I took a look at the thread I think you're referring to, and both those comments and their upvotes are by established users with no signs of fakery that either we or our software could pick up on. What you observed is probably a different phenomenon: early comments in a thread often start off negative, and only later do other users show up to post positively—their motivation being to balance things out. Often the positive comments to get the most upvotes in the end, but the whole process takes a while to play out. If you've ever run across a thread where the top comment says, "I can't believe how negative this thread is!" and proceeds to make a positive case with great fervor, this dynamic is probably why.
- dpweb 10y ago
  I dont think you could stop upvote fakery. Maybe like highway speeding just try to control it enough to keep things somewhat safe. Old, established accts on all the sites can be, and are, sold to people for purposes of fake upvoting. Maybe limit the number of upvotes one can do in a day. Doesn't seem a major inconvienence and makes the upvotes more valuable.
dang 10y ago
You've made these accusations many times but never supply a drop of evidence. We've repeatedly responded [1,2,3] and asked you to stop, yet still you persist. I appreciate your concern for the quality of HN, but at some point this becomes abuse in its own right. It's unfortunately common for users to feel absolutely certain that other commenters are astroturfing when they merely happen to disagree about company X or issue Y. The underlying assumption is: 'no one I disagree with could possibly be commenting in good faith—they must be disingenuous'. This is a cognitive bias. Nearly always, when we investigate these accusations we find nothing—nothing except that the accuser really dislikes $BIGCO. Real astroturfing and shilling do exist, I've personally poured countless hours into combating them on HN, and I can tell you from long experience with the data that they don't look anything like what you're positing. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11844253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11844253 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11988639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11988639 3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12322393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12322393
- truetraveller 10y ago
  First, I want to thank the guys behind HN and Dang for being very open about any HN vested interests. I have no doubt HN tries hard to be honest. No complaints here. That being said, I am very suprised you mentioned "drop of evidence". It is very upsetting you said that. There is hard evidence. The fact is: There are may dishonest people in this world. They may justify their honesty, but that's not the point. See the PLETHORA of dishonest reviews (with proof) on Amazon, Yelp, Ebay, etc. And HN is the perfect place to game comments/upvotes/topics, and you bet it is. Firstly, it's simple to game HN. Actually, too easy. And the returns are really good. The audience are high-income earners, and intelligent people. The topics can be very niche (which means highly targeted). In fact the mentality that "HN can't be gamed" is better for the gamers, since other HN users will really believe most comments are genuine. HERE'S THE DEAL: I will do a project "for free" for the public good. This will hopefully establish proof. If I am allowed by HN legally, I will show my study of how I can easily, massively game HN. And you will not but able to detect it. I will not make money of this, but I will provide detailed statistics about traffic and CTA clicks. I will provide a dollar value of the fruits of my gaming, if it was to be real. I would be just one person doing this in my spare time. When the fruits are so sweet, PR companies will employ full-time paid individuals and maybe even teams. P.s. Dang, I know you try hard to remove "shill" comments /upvotes /topics. Yes, you catch the amateurs. But the whole point of shilling is to blend in be undetectable. You don't and simply cannot catch those. And on a seperate, there was a study that "doctors who believe they cannot be gamed/bribed, are actually the most gamed/bribed".
DanBC 10y ago
> Add a report button to report users. You can flag individual comments. And you can also email the mods with your suspicions.

by frik 10y ago

whitepoplar 10y ago

Please name these companies!

cowpig 10y ago
this--plus evidence too if you can find it please!
randomname2 10y ago
This probably refers to Uber and Peter Thiel and companies associated to him? If they're manipulating HN they're not very good at it. Lately I'm seeing smear pieces against them appear on the front page on almost a daily basis and the tone in these threads is overwhelmingly toxic rather than positive.

wickawic 10y ago

I could be wrong but I felt this happened on the Spotify thread that is currently on the front page. All the inital reaction was negative, about how the piece was a 'submarine,' etc. Now the top 5 comments are about Spotify's new killer feature and how happy the customers are...

dang 10y ago
I took a look at the thread I think you're referring to, and both those comments and their upvotes are by established users with no signs of fakery that either we or our software could pick up on. What you observed is probably a different phenomenon: early comments in a thread often start off negative, and only later do other users show up to post positively—their motivation being to balance things out. Often the positive comments to get the most upvotes in the end, but the whole process takes a while to play out. If you've ever run across a thread where the top comment says, "I can't believe how negative this thread is!" and proceeds to make a positive case with great fervor, this dynamic is probably why.
dpweb 10y ago
I dont think you could stop upvote fakery. Maybe like highway speeding just try to control it enough to keep things somewhat safe. Old, established accts on all the sites can be, and are, sold to people for purposes of fake upvoting. Maybe limit the number of upvotes one can do in a day. Doesn't seem a major inconvienence and makes the upvotes more valuable.

dang 10y ago

You've made these accusations many times but never supply a drop of evidence. We've repeatedly responded [1,2,3] and asked you to stop, yet still you persist. I appreciate your concern for the quality of HN, but at some point this becomes abuse in its own right. It's unfortunately common for users to feel absolutely certain that other commenters are astroturfing when they merely happen to disagree about company X or issue Y. The underlying assumption is: 'no one I disagree with could possibly be commenting in good faith—they must be disingenuous'. This is a cognitive bias. Nearly always, when we investigate these accusations we find nothing—nothing except that the accuser really dislikes $BIGCO. Real astroturfing and shilling do exist, I've personally poured countless hours into combating them on HN, and I can tell you from long experience with the data that they don't look anything like what you're positing. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11844253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11844253 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11988639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11988639 3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12322393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12322393

truetraveller 10y ago
First, I want to thank the guys behind HN and Dang for being very open about any HN vested interests. I have no doubt HN tries hard to be honest. No complaints here. That being said, I am very suprised you mentioned "drop of evidence". It is very upsetting you said that. There is hard evidence. The fact is: There are may dishonest people in this world. They may justify their honesty, but that's not the point. See the PLETHORA of dishonest reviews (with proof) on Amazon, Yelp, Ebay, etc. And HN is the perfect place to game comments/upvotes/topics, and you bet it is. Firstly, it's simple to game HN. Actually, too easy. And the returns are really good. The audience are high-income earners, and intelligent people. The topics can be very niche (which means highly targeted). In fact the mentality that "HN can't be gamed" is better for the gamers, since other HN users will really believe most comments are genuine. HERE'S THE DEAL: I will do a project "for free" for the public good. This will hopefully establish proof. If I am allowed by HN legally, I will show my study of how I can easily, massively game HN. And you will not but able to detect it. I will not make money of this, but I will provide detailed statistics about traffic and CTA clicks. I will provide a dollar value of the fruits of my gaming, if it was to be real. I would be just one person doing this in my spare time. When the fruits are so sweet, PR companies will employ full-time paid individuals and maybe even teams. P.s. Dang, I know you try hard to remove "shill" comments /upvotes /topics. Yes, you catch the amateurs. But the whole point of shilling is to blend in be undetectable. You don't and simply cannot catch those. And on a seperate, there was a study that "doctors who believe they cannot be gamed/bribed, are actually the most gamed/bribed".

DanBC 10y ago

> Add a report button to report users. You can flag individual comments. And you can also email the mods with your suspicions.