Thank you for the long reply! I feel bad to have prompted you to spend so much time but I hope it's worth it somehow. I know I spend time on comments that somet

Thank you for the long reply! I feel bad to have prompted you to spend so much time but I hope it's worth it somehow. I know I spend time on comments that sometimes are read by (I guess) only a handful of people, and it helps me figure out both my thinking on things, and how to articulate that thinking, and what works and what doesn't, for communication. Anyway, what you say makes sense. >based on having spent countless hours studying the HN data on this I assume you mean including looking at data like account creation times, IP addresses, etc. which might help bring that kind of stuff to light, and I am glad to hear that someone does that from time to time at least. Not to contradict anything you are saying, and I'm sure you are already well aware of this, but the fact that the arms race between perpetration and detection of astroturfing type behaviors is escalating over time means that sites may be called on to up their game for detection. I mean we all know this is one fascinating front in the spam wars as well, and a key maleficent use case for machine learning. I hope HN will keep evolving to be able keep up! Seems like quite a challenge. Or, even better, with luck and your work on moderation perhaps it can be somehow shielded from that stuff!… no pressure ;-).