> The subversive marketing and political astroturfing really annoy me as a long time reddit user. It's not as if Hacker News is immune to this. Pay attention t

> The subversive marketing and political astroturfing really annoy me as a long time reddit user. It's not as if Hacker News is immune to this. Pay attention to some of the posts being pushed to the front page and the associated comments and you may notice similar shenanigans occuring here. This applies doubly so if the post is made during the weekend.[1] Considering the fact that many users on HN are reddit transplants, there is the inevitable spillover effect. Comments of the lowbrow variety have become more commonplace (e.g. comment threads made of low-hanging puns). Without strict moderation, this site too will devolve. After all, you can take the redditor out of reddit but you can't take the reddit out of the redditor. [1]: As one example, a couple weeks ago there was a new account created by a user for the sole purpose of selling their book on HN; they've only been active on that account for that one single post and (I strongly suspect) they used alts to artificially boost their post to the front page.