12 ms·

There are trustless systems though, like bitcoin Oh btw you can buy hn upvotes too : https://upvotes.club/buy/hacker-news-upvote/ https://upvotes.club/buy/hack

There are trustless systems though, like bitcoin Oh btw you can buy hn upvotes too : https://upvotes.club/buy/hacker-news-upvote/ https://upvotes.club/buy/hacker-news-upvote/

tyingq 7y ago
"We upvote with very strong accounts; if you don’t make it on the main page after 10 upvotes, more won’t help"
- throwno 7y ago
  Oh god. Imagine the thousands of bland consensus talking points they had to regurgitate to build those accounts. Never trust somebody with no gray comments.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    Don't help them :) They can just throw in a few posts disparaging Rust to look credible.
  - thenewnewguy 7y ago
    I guess that means I can trust you.
  - drummer 7y ago
    They also need a few warnings from dang for absolute trust.
- iudqnolq 7y ago
  > On Hacker News, when the post is new, it doesn’t matter how much you upvote it after a certain point. After fewer than 10 early upvotes with great accounts, you’ll usually make it to the front page. From there, HN moderators select manually what they want to keep there. A good strategy is to buy only a few upvotes first in order to make your post visible; then, after it remains approved for 10 minutes or more, buy a lot more upvotes in order to rank it better, or help maintain its good position. Is this actually true? I don't think so. It also seems funny they offer to sell a factor of ten more upvotes to articles already on the front page. Maybe they'll just sit back and watch it happen regardless?
  - clort 7y ago
    Well here is a thing. Do these guys expect any repeat sales? I mean, they could try their technique and if it works then great but if either way they still have the money. Is there a rating system where reviews are posted and would it matter if there was? (see https://www.xkcd.com/325/ https://www.xkcd.com/325/) edit: Anyway, the mods have access to the database to see who has been upvoting articles onto the front page. If a group of ('high value') accounts upvote in a similar way on a regular basis then they could be detected..
    - giarc 7y ago
      I feel like mods could easily just pay the $2 and create a post for them to upvote. Then detect those accounts and IPs and block them. However, it's likely just a whack-a-mole situation. Perhaps they could shadow ban them instead?
      - throwno 7y ago
        They probably have accounts that match the topics and regularly upvote. So they have some accounts that upvote those entry level ML medium articles, another that upvotes lifestyle Saases, another that upvotes pet language posts, etc.
      - DonHopkins 7y ago
        Is it better for the community to ban the fake clickers with disposable accounts, or to ban the actual people who pay fake clickers to promote their spammy posts, instead? Once you know who the fake clicker accounts are, leave them alone and let them continue to help you identify and ban dishonest self promoters who are trying to game the system to their advantage. Hell, maybe dang runs upvotes.club himself, so he can take their customer's money then ban them immediately: that would be most efficient and least error prone. As far as I know, buboard might be one of his sock puppets, posting the URL as a honey pot to catch dishonest HN users. ;)
        giarc 7y ago
- jschwartzi 7y ago
  I'm starting to understand how all the mediocre metaphysics articles from Quanta and Medium keep ending up on this website. They're the textual equivalent of graham crackers. Just bland enough to not be thought-provoking, but just interesting enough to keep people reading. And with so little to say on the subjects in question, they provoke huge off-topic discussions.
  - DonHopkins 7y ago
    Bland Graham Crackers for Paul Graham's Hackers? Looking to Quell Sexual Urges? Consider the Graham Cracker. One of America's first diet hawks, Sylvester Graham was certain that sexual desire was ruining society. His solution: whole wheat. How a zealot's legacy lives in our foods today. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/01/looking-to-quell-sexual-urges-consider-the-graham-cracker/282769/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/01/looking-t...
lifeisstillgood 7y ago
Wow, does that even work - I just assumed that HN was too small a community for misbehaviour to be lost in the noise. Would love to hear moderators opinions on this?
- dobleboble 7y ago
  Recently HN seems to have become more heavily targeted. I think bad actors have realized the value of the community here. I am increasingly wary of opening links to unfamiliar domains except in a sandbox environment.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    This has been going on for quite some time. But the mod(s) do a more than credible job at keeping up with the trash and identifying such behavior. The bigger problem - in my opinion - is people submitting (unwittingly) content cloned from elsewhere. There is quite a bit of blogspam that makes it to the front page. Usually even that is taken care of sooner rather than later but for every time it works there is proof that it can work which will drive more people to try to get away with it. We can all help with this issue: ensure that we submit content from original sources and in case content from a cloned source is submitted flag the article and point to the original.
    - nkurz 7y ago
      > in case content from a cloned source is submitted flag the article and point to the original It sure would be nice if there was a way to add a comment to explain why one has flagged an article, so the moderators don't have to guess why it was flagged! As it is, I occasionally add an explanation in a comment or direct email, but it always feels awkward.
  - buboard 7y ago
    i presume if someone would use this, they d use an "OK" domain like medium
- xorcist 7y ago
thatfrenchguy 7y ago
Bitcoin is not trust less, the more compute power you have the more « votes » you have.
- buboard 7y ago
  then Monero. the point is there is a system that minimizes trust , certainly more than the corporate system
  - DonHopkins 7y ago
    Whenever somebody starts spouting off about Bitcoin or Monero, I minimize the trust I have in them.
    - buboard 7y ago
      trust comes and goes - we ll see that when the current negative-rate world goes belly up. even as last resort measures, cryptos have their uses
      - short_sells_poo 7y ago
        When that happens, I'd surmise that the following is not going to be a good hedge: a completely ephemeral "asset" that is not backed by any conventional power structure or society, while at the same time being fully dependent on a highly sophisticated infrastructure made possible by said power structures and societies. Cryptocurrencies depend on a redundant and highly interconnected network of many diverse actors to be able to maintain their trust guarantees. How that network is going to stay around in a doomsday scenario is very much up in the air. The main point, the crucial point of a doomsday hedge is that it should depend as little as possible on the intricacies of the old world.
        buboard 7y ago
        the same goes for cash & credit card, and in any case an apocalyptic war resets all prices to 0. Or you could extoil the virtues of gold but good luck carrying your gold in an EU country from Jan 1st, let alone the Moon and Mars
mlvljr 7y ago
Heeiille can I buy being upvoted outta the shadow ban?
- mlvljr 7y ago
  dang! downvoted again
blablabla123 7y ago
> Oh btw you can buy hn upvotes too HN credibility just dropped 80% to me for the moment ;-) No but seriously, this is pretty bad. Many people are kind of addicted to HN and to many this is a stream of inspiration. I've seen people often share posts in internal Workplace chats where most people are not frequent HN readers. Also having learned today that one can buy Reddit upvotes, I think this whole count thing is now officially useless.
- buboard 7y ago
  i assume it s been happening for quite a while now, at least for some products featured sometimes, but it doesnt seem it's very prevalent
- dang 7y ago
  Edit: I've been asked to make this more explicit. How about: If you do this you will get banned. Don't assume that those upvotes are counted. It's a cat and mouse game. We eat a lot of mice. If you or anyone suspects that a post has made HN's front page because of vote manipulation, you should let us know at hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate. We have years of experience with this data. I'd never say it never works, because we don't know what we don't know. But I can tell you that many people who've used that spam service have gotten their posts buried, their accounts banned, and their sites blacklisted.
  - DonHopkins 7y ago
    In the case of click farms driving virtual browsers with selenium or puppeteer, there aren't even any actual mice involved in those clicks!
- filoleg 7y ago
  > https://upvotes.club/buy/hacker-news-upvote/ https://upvotes.club/buy/hacker-news-upvote/ I checked out that page, and at least with this one, it imo doesn't devalue HN credibility for me. The max number of upvotes you can buy for HN on this website is 10 per post, which hardly makes or breaks an HN post. Those 10 upvotes would only be useful for an initial kick off for a post, but if the post itself is trash and legitimate users don't upvote it enough, it will all go in vain. So it would be kinda impossible to use this service to boost absolutely trash articles that people don't care about it.
dang 7y ago
Using that spam service will get your account and website banned here, as plenty have discovered to their chagrin.

There are trustless systems though, like bitcoin Oh btw you can buy hn upvotes too : https://upvotes.club/buy/hacker-news-upvote/ https://upvotes.club/buy/hacker-news-upvote/

tyingq 7y ago

"We upvote with very strong accounts; if you don’t make it on the main page after 10 upvotes, more won’t help"

throwno 7y ago
Oh god. Imagine the thousands of bland consensus talking points they had to regurgitate to build those accounts. Never trust somebody with no gray comments.
- tyingq 7y ago
  Don't help them :) They can just throw in a few posts disparaging Rust to look credible.
- thenewnewguy 7y ago
  I guess that means I can trust you.
- drummer 7y ago
  They also need a few warnings from dang for absolute trust.
iudqnolq 7y ago
> On Hacker News, when the post is new, it doesn’t matter how much you upvote it after a certain point. After fewer than 10 early upvotes with great accounts, you’ll usually make it to the front page. From there, HN moderators select manually what they want to keep there. A good strategy is to buy only a few upvotes first in order to make your post visible; then, after it remains approved for 10 minutes or more, buy a lot more upvotes in order to rank it better, or help maintain its good position. Is this actually true? I don't think so. It also seems funny they offer to sell a factor of ten more upvotes to articles already on the front page. Maybe they'll just sit back and watch it happen regardless?
- clort 7y ago
  Well here is a thing. Do these guys expect any repeat sales? I mean, they could try their technique and if it works then great but if either way they still have the money. Is there a rating system where reviews are posted and would it matter if there was? (see https://www.xkcd.com/325/ https://www.xkcd.com/325/) edit: Anyway, the mods have access to the database to see who has been upvoting articles onto the front page. If a group of ('high value') accounts upvote in a similar way on a regular basis then they could be detected..
  - giarc 7y ago
    I feel like mods could easily just pay the $2 and create a post for them to upvote. Then detect those accounts and IPs and block them. However, it's likely just a whack-a-mole situation. Perhaps they could shadow ban them instead?
    - throwno 7y ago
      They probably have accounts that match the topics and regularly upvote. So they have some accounts that upvote those entry level ML medium articles, another that upvotes lifestyle Saases, another that upvotes pet language posts, etc.
    - DonHopkins 7y ago
      Is it better for the community to ban the fake clickers with disposable accounts, or to ban the actual people who pay fake clickers to promote their spammy posts, instead? Once you know who the fake clicker accounts are, leave them alone and let them continue to help you identify and ban dishonest self promoters who are trying to game the system to their advantage. Hell, maybe dang runs upvotes.club himself, so he can take their customer's money then ban them immediately: that would be most efficient and least error prone. As far as I know, buboard might be one of his sock puppets, posting the URL as a honey pot to catch dishonest HN users. ;)
      - giarc 7y ago
jschwartzi 7y ago
I'm starting to understand how all the mediocre metaphysics articles from Quanta and Medium keep ending up on this website. They're the textual equivalent of graham crackers. Just bland enough to not be thought-provoking, but just interesting enough to keep people reading. And with so little to say on the subjects in question, they provoke huge off-topic discussions.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  Bland Graham Crackers for Paul Graham's Hackers? Looking to Quell Sexual Urges? Consider the Graham Cracker. One of America's first diet hawks, Sylvester Graham was certain that sexual desire was ruining society. His solution: whole wheat. How a zealot's legacy lives in our foods today. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/01/looking-to-quell-sexual-urges-consider-the-graham-cracker/282769/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/01/looking-t...

lifeisstillgood 7y ago

Wow, does that even work - I just assumed that HN was too small a community for misbehaviour to be lost in the noise. Would love to hear moderators opinions on this?

dobleboble 7y ago
Recently HN seems to have become more heavily targeted. I think bad actors have realized the value of the community here. I am increasingly wary of opening links to unfamiliar domains except in a sandbox environment.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  This has been going on for quite some time. But the mod(s) do a more than credible job at keeping up with the trash and identifying such behavior. The bigger problem - in my opinion - is people submitting (unwittingly) content cloned from elsewhere. There is quite a bit of blogspam that makes it to the front page. Usually even that is taken care of sooner rather than later but for every time it works there is proof that it can work which will drive more people to try to get away with it. We can all help with this issue: ensure that we submit content from original sources and in case content from a cloned source is submitted flag the article and point to the original.
  - nkurz 7y ago
    > in case content from a cloned source is submitted flag the article and point to the original It sure would be nice if there was a way to add a comment to explain why one has flagged an article, so the moderators don't have to guess why it was flagged! As it is, I occasionally add an explanation in a comment or direct email, but it always feels awkward.
- buboard 7y ago
  i presume if someone would use this, they d use an "OK" domain like medium
xorcist 7y ago

thatfrenchguy 7y ago

Bitcoin is not trust less, the more compute power you have the more « votes » you have.

buboard 7y ago
then Monero. the point is there is a system that minimizes trust , certainly more than the corporate system
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  Whenever somebody starts spouting off about Bitcoin or Monero, I minimize the trust I have in them.
  - buboard 7y ago
    trust comes and goes - we ll see that when the current negative-rate world goes belly up. even as last resort measures, cryptos have their uses
    - short_sells_poo 7y ago
      When that happens, I'd surmise that the following is not going to be a good hedge: a completely ephemeral "asset" that is not backed by any conventional power structure or society, while at the same time being fully dependent on a highly sophisticated infrastructure made possible by said power structures and societies. Cryptocurrencies depend on a redundant and highly interconnected network of many diverse actors to be able to maintain their trust guarantees. How that network is going to stay around in a doomsday scenario is very much up in the air. The main point, the crucial point of a doomsday hedge is that it should depend as little as possible on the intricacies of the old world.
      - buboard 7y ago
        the same goes for cash & credit card, and in any case an apocalyptic war resets all prices to 0. Or you could extoil the virtues of gold but good luck carrying your gold in an EU country from Jan 1st, let alone the Moon and Mars

mlvljr 7y ago

Heeiille can I buy being upvoted outta the shadow ban?

mlvljr 7y ago
dang! downvoted again

blablabla123 7y ago

> Oh btw you can buy hn upvotes too HN credibility just dropped 80% to me for the moment ;-) No but seriously, this is pretty bad. Many people are kind of addicted to HN and to many this is a stream of inspiration. I've seen people often share posts in internal Workplace chats where most people are not frequent HN readers. Also having learned today that one can buy Reddit upvotes, I think this whole count thing is now officially useless.

buboard 7y ago
i assume it s been happening for quite a while now, at least for some products featured sometimes, but it doesnt seem it's very prevalent
dang 7y ago
Edit: I've been asked to make this more explicit. How about: If you do this you will get banned. Don't assume that those upvotes are counted. It's a cat and mouse game. We eat a lot of mice. If you or anyone suspects that a post has made HN's front page because of vote manipulation, you should let us know at hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate. We have years of experience with this data. I'd never say it never works, because we don't know what we don't know. But I can tell you that many people who've used that spam service have gotten their posts buried, their accounts banned, and their sites blacklisted.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  In the case of click farms driving virtual browsers with selenium or puppeteer, there aren't even any actual mice involved in those clicks!
filoleg 7y ago
> https://upvotes.club/buy/hacker-news-upvote/ https://upvotes.club/buy/hacker-news-upvote/ I checked out that page, and at least with this one, it imo doesn't devalue HN credibility for me. The max number of upvotes you can buy for HN on this website is 10 per post, which hardly makes or breaks an HN post. Those 10 upvotes would only be useful for an initial kick off for a post, but if the post itself is trash and legitimate users don't upvote it enough, it will all go in vain. So it would be kinda impossible to use this service to boost absolutely trash articles that people don't care about it.

dang 7y ago

Using that spam service will get your account and website banned here, as plenty have discovered to their chagrin.