8 ms·

What's going on here exactly? Why does this post have an insane amount of upvotes and like 50 posts only with text like "Congratz my man!" or other people who

What's going on here exactly? Why does this post have an insane amount of upvotes and like 50 posts only with text like "Congratz my man!" or other people who seem to know this dude and contribute with nothing?

sedatk 6y ago
HN don't let majority of the users downvote, that's what's going on.
- kossTKR 6y ago
  This whole thread is a little bonkers. A dude posts what seems to be essentially a commercial for his company, extremely short and light on details and it gets 500+ upvotes in a couple of hours. But yeah maybe i have just become to cynical and my bullshit metre is off - and if that's the case i apologise and congratulate these dudes.
  - gknoy 6y ago
    For what it's worth, I tend to upvote most "Show HN" threads, because I want to encourage new things. I've never seen a "Thank HN" post before, and thought that it was worth upvoting because it's nice to see success stories, especially when it's due in large part (according to the OP) on the advice given by this community when the product was in its infancy. I thought that was pretty cool.
- dang 6y ago
  There's nothing wrong with empty comments saying positive things like congratulations. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html, which was written well over 10 years ago. It's not as if stories like this come up very often.
OzzyB 6y ago
What do you think is going on? The call went out to upvote and "Congrats" spam this thread -- just look at the comment history on those accounts -- all inactive/active at around the same time. I guess that's the lesson being taught here, have an army of sockpuppet accounts ready for your "Tell HN" thread and grow your business!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- RussianCow 6y ago
  > just look at the comment history on those accounts -- all inactive/active at around the same time. What are you talking about? I just went through about half the accounts that have commented on here, and while a small handful do look suspicious, most are normal-looking accounts with over 100 rep. Maybe people are genuinely happy for the OP? Is that so hard to comprehend?
  - OzzyB 6y ago
    > and while a small handful do look suspicious Isn't that not what we're talking about? Maybe you weren't around to see all the "Congrats" comments and now the thread looks more legit -- I believe we call that "seeding", what do you call it?
    - 11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
      Since there are 250 people at the company, maybe they all wanted to congratulate their CEO and some didn't have accounts yet.
      - dang 6y ago
        That fits a few of the data points but not the majority, who are established users coming from lots of different parts of the world.
- dang 6y ago
  That's not accurate, and this comment breaks the site guidelines against making accusations of astroturfing and manipulation without evidence. Please stick to the rules when commenting here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. It's not ok to impugn someone's integrity just because of how something happens to look to you. The overwhelming majority of the time, these conclusions are wrong, it's the internet's fault for jumping to them, and they poison the community. Real abuse exists, we do a lot to try to counteract it, and we crack down pretty hard when we find it. But there needs to be something objective to go on.
chirau 6y ago
Because there isn't much to say other than congratulations and at the same time it's nice to upvote such a post for feel good reasons and to showcase things that have been born out of this community.
searchableguy 6y ago
From the guidelines - Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- nus07 6y ago
  No offense but your account was created 18 days ago. Something seems very weird about this post.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - tomnipotent 6y ago
    Yet your was only created 64 and has less post activity than the account you're responding to. Should we read too much into that?
  - dang 6y ago
    Please don't do this here. Plenty of new accounts are old users.
nus07 6y ago
HN mods. This looks very sketchy. I looked at a some of the Congrats messages and the accounts were 3-20 days old. Why is this on the front page of HN to merit a discussion?
aloukissas 6y ago
Love this guy's story. Wouldn't downvote it for anything. Let's all be nice and say "you're welcome - keep kicking ass".
icey 6y ago
It's pretty cool to see something get launched here and have the founder come back TEN YEARS LATER to talk about it. That's crazy rare. HN was a little smaller then, so it's fun to see names you haven't seen in awhile talking about the same stuff as before.
npiit 6y ago
I'd have agreed until I inspected the guy's business and it looks very established. 10 years old. 1 million visits in the last 3 months according to similarweb and nothing really suspicious if you look up his company in hn.algolia.com. Your comment is kinda paranoid but I understand it. Just try to look up the algolia website if you're suspicious of any company's activity.
cheez 6y ago
youre new, this is a YC classic
dang 6y ago
It looks legit to me. Keep in mind that the earliest comments to appear in a thread are often the reflexive ones, because they take the least effort (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20reflective%20reflex&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). In this case there isn't much to reflexively react negatively to, so there are a lot of congratulations. I think this post is doing well because it combines two things that HN readers like a lot: (1) business success stories, as long as the succeeder is someone the reader identifies with; (2) all things meta. Meta is the crack of internet forums. Oh, and a runner-up: (3) references to old things. The passage of time is what confers internet legitimacy on things. So here we have a trifecta. There isn't massive overlap between the congratulatory commenters and the users who upvoted the submission, and among those who did both, plenty are long-established HN users. This is not what manipulation tends to look like.
- kossTKR 6y ago
  Those are some good points. As i said in another post, i have probably become a little too cynical after working in the field for so long - so congratulations to these dudes.

sedatk 6y ago

HN don't let majority of the users downvote, that's what's going on.

kossTKR 6y ago
This whole thread is a little bonkers. A dude posts what seems to be essentially a commercial for his company, extremely short and light on details and it gets 500+ upvotes in a couple of hours. But yeah maybe i have just become to cynical and my bullshit metre is off - and if that's the case i apologise and congratulate these dudes.
- gknoy 6y ago
  For what it's worth, I tend to upvote most "Show HN" threads, because I want to encourage new things. I've never seen a "Thank HN" post before, and thought that it was worth upvoting because it's nice to see success stories, especially when it's due in large part (according to the OP) on the advice given by this community when the product was in its infancy. I thought that was pretty cool.
dang 6y ago
There's nothing wrong with empty comments saying positive things like congratulations. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html, which was written well over 10 years ago. It's not as if stories like this come up very often.

OzzyB 6y ago

What do you think is going on? The call went out to upvote and "Congrats" spam this thread -- just look at the comment history on those accounts -- all inactive/active at around the same time. I guess that's the lesson being taught here, have an army of sockpuppet accounts ready for your "Tell HN" thread and grow your business!

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
RussianCow 6y ago
> just look at the comment history on those accounts -- all inactive/active at around the same time. What are you talking about? I just went through about half the accounts that have commented on here, and while a small handful do look suspicious, most are normal-looking accounts with over 100 rep. Maybe people are genuinely happy for the OP? Is that so hard to comprehend?
- OzzyB 6y ago
  > and while a small handful do look suspicious Isn't that not what we're talking about? Maybe you weren't around to see all the "Congrats" comments and now the thread looks more legit -- I believe we call that "seeding", what do you call it?
  - 11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
    Since there are 250 people at the company, maybe they all wanted to congratulate their CEO and some didn't have accounts yet.
    - dang 6y ago
      That fits a few of the data points but not the majority, who are established users coming from lots of different parts of the world.
dang 6y ago
That's not accurate, and this comment breaks the site guidelines against making accusations of astroturfing and manipulation without evidence. Please stick to the rules when commenting here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. It's not ok to impugn someone's integrity just because of how something happens to look to you. The overwhelming majority of the time, these conclusions are wrong, it's the internet's fault for jumping to them, and they poison the community. Real abuse exists, we do a lot to try to counteract it, and we crack down pretty hard when we find it. But there needs to be something objective to go on.

chirau 6y ago

Because there isn't much to say other than congratulations and at the same time it's nice to upvote such a post for feel good reasons and to showcase things that have been born out of this community.

searchableguy 6y ago

From the guidelines - Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nus07 6y ago
No offense but your account was created 18 days ago. Something seems very weird about this post.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tomnipotent 6y ago
  Yet your was only created 64 and has less post activity than the account you're responding to. Should we read too much into that?
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't do this here. Plenty of new accounts are old users.

nus07 6y ago

HN mods. This looks very sketchy. I looked at a some of the Congrats messages and the accounts were 3-20 days old. Why is this on the front page of HN to merit a discussion?

aloukissas 6y ago

Love this guy's story. Wouldn't downvote it for anything. Let's all be nice and say "you're welcome - keep kicking ass".

icey 6y ago

It's pretty cool to see something get launched here and have the founder come back TEN YEARS LATER to talk about it. That's crazy rare. HN was a little smaller then, so it's fun to see names you haven't seen in awhile talking about the same stuff as before.

npiit 6y ago

I'd have agreed until I inspected the guy's business and it looks very established. 10 years old. 1 million visits in the last 3 months according to similarweb and nothing really suspicious if you look up his company in hn.algolia.com. Your comment is kinda paranoid but I understand it. Just try to look up the algolia website if you're suspicious of any company's activity.

cheez 6y ago

youre new, this is a YC classic

dang 6y ago

It looks legit to me. Keep in mind that the earliest comments to appear in a thread are often the reflexive ones, because they take the least effort (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20reflective%20reflex&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). In this case there isn't much to reflexively react negatively to, so there are a lot of congratulations. I think this post is doing well because it combines two things that HN readers like a lot: (1) business success stories, as long as the succeeder is someone the reader identifies with; (2) all things meta. Meta is the crack of internet forums. Oh, and a runner-up: (3) references to old things. The passage of time is what confers internet legitimacy on things. So here we have a trifecta. There isn't massive overlap between the congratulatory commenters and the users who upvoted the submission, and among those who did both, plenty are long-established HN users. This is not what manipulation tends to look like.

kossTKR 6y ago
Those are some good points. As i said in another post, i have probably become a little too cynical after working in the field for so long - so congratulations to these dudes.