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> HN's algorithm doesn't do that. What made you think it did? Good question. I think I must have read or misunderstood it in a other comment on here and said "

by Y_Y 7y ago

> HN's algorithm doesn't do that. What made you think it did? Good question. I think I must have read or misunderstood it in a other comment on here and said "that's plausible, must be true". I didn't mean to impugn the quality of moderation here, in fact I think it's generally excellent. The fact that this site has seems to have an influential and affluent readership means somebody must by at least trying to sell astroturf, even if they can't deliver.

dang 7y ago
They certainly are. And it's possible that some are good enough to get past us—I suppose that would be a Rumsfeldian known unknown. But at least some are for sure not getting past us. And generally when users suggest that a post might have been astroturfed, when we look (which we always do), we almost always find normal behavior from established users. There's a lot of randomness in what gets traction on HN and the brain has plenty of opportunity to project patterns into it.