There's some topics that rapidly attract a certain pattern of posting. Where the first comments are something blatantly wrong, or just wildly provocative. Often

There's some topics that rapidly attract a certain pattern of posting. Where the first comments are something blatantly wrong, or just wildly provocative. Often only tenuously, if at all, related to TFA. They then proceed to answer every. single. comment. with more provocation. See it enough times and it looks like these low karma and activity, often recently created accounts, show a real pattern. Call it astro turfing, call it gaming the algo to trigger a spam flag for burying the thread on HN, or call it an incredibly unlikely coincidence, I do wish it were not so. Oftentimes it's not even a great article or study they're attacking, just that the topic exists at all. If it were left alone to sink or swim with real comments, half the time they'd sink intellectually due to it being poor reporting, or reporting a flawed study etc. I find it one of the more frustrating things about current HN, but I know of nowhere else free of it.