4 ms·

Critical comments on this thread are receiving an unusual amount of downvotes in my opinion.

sombremesa 5y ago
Including that one, which was downvoted three times in 0 minutes. Is that natural? I suppose it is. It'd be more shocking if companies weren't shilling on these platforms. I have to admit I haven't been countering this with upvotes on my part, which is a fairly simple solution. In retrospect astroturfing [0] is not the appropriate term, previous discussion on that here [1]. Shilling on the other hand is the correct term - but there doesn't appear to be a meaningful way to distinguish between paid and unpaid shills as an observer. Perhaps my comment should've been more along the lines of "there are dissenting voices that have been buried," which on Reddit would be a callout that says "sort by controversial". Unfortunately, neither is useful for comments that aren't top-level. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19418177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19418177
- GordonS 5y ago
  I presume the OPs comment is getting down voted because they made an unsubstantiated accusation of shilling - pretty sure that's against the HN rules, but in any case HN users tend to take a dim view of this behaviour.
- dang 5y ago
  You broke the site guidelines with this comment too. Please read them to the end: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
frakkingcylons 5y ago
If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and they'll look at the data.
_mwza 5y ago
If you think this is 'conspiracy' talk - enjoy this quote from Satya Nadella: > In fact, this morning, I was reading a news article in Hacker News, which is a community where we have been working hard to make sure that Azure is growing in popularity and I was pleasantly surprised to see that we have made a lot of progress in some sense that at least basically said that we are neck to neck with Amazon when it comes to even lead developers as represented in that community. So we have more work to do, but we are making progress on all dimensions. https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-corp-msft-q1-2019-005545657.html https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-corp-msft-q1-201... EDIT: I don't mean this to be an indictment of the moderation on HN - on the contrary, I think an amazing job is done to balance out this stuff. It's just crazy to realize that corporate efforts on HN are important enough to mention on an earnings call!
- Sholmesy 5y ago
  Wow, how brazen. Everyone knows this happens on any forum with sufficient popularity, but it's striking to see it openly admitted.
dang 5y ago
> These comments are astroturfed af. Even a slightly critical comment is receiving tonnes of downvotes one minute after being posted. You broke the site guidelines badly with this, as did everyone who upvoted it. Please read the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. They contain: "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 hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data." We have that rule for good reason, as I've explained ad nauseum over many years: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... including yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27271356 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27271356 I looked at the data and saw no evidence that the comments are astroturfed, let alone "af". Perhaps I'm missing the obvious? In that case these astroturfers must be devilishly clever—enough not to leave any of the traces that we look for—and also dumb enough to leave comments that readers will pick out as obviously astroturfed. More likely, though, you were doing what internet users commonly do, which is vastly over-weight the things they dislike and then read sinister interpretations into them. (See https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20dislike%20notice&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... for many past explanations.) The overwhelming majority of these interpretations have literally zero evidence, and they're deeply poisonous to forum threads. In the future, if you don't have evidence, please don't post any of these; and if you do have evidence, please email hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it. But people having different tastes in game engines does not count as evidence.
- sombremesa 5y ago
  I've edited my comment, still not sure it's compliant to the guidelines but probably better than the original.
  - dang 5y ago
    I appreciate your wish to be more in keeping with the guidelines! And I hope I didn't come down on you too hard. The problem is really a co-creation between comments and upvotes, and the upvotes do the greater damage—but there's no way to reply directly to them. Your edit is still not in keeping though, because if you read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html to the second-last rule, you'll find: Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. Moreover, from what I've looked at in this thread, your comment appears to be false. Which critical comments are you talking about specifically?

Including that one, which was downvoted three times in 0 minutes. Is that natural? I suppose it is. It'd be more shocking if companies weren't shilling on these platforms. I have to admit I haven't been countering this with upvotes on my part, which is a fairly simple solution. In retrospect astroturfing [0] is not the appropriate term, previous discussion on that here [1]. Shilling on the other hand is the correct term - but there doesn't appear to be a meaningful way to distinguish between paid and unpaid shills as an observer. Perhaps my comment should've been more along the lines of "there are dissenting voices that have been buried," which on Reddit would be a callout that says "sort by controversial". Unfortunately, neither is useful for comments that aren't top-level. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19418177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19418177

GordonS 5y ago
I presume the OPs comment is getting down voted because they made an unsubstantiated accusation of shilling - pretty sure that's against the HN rules, but in any case HN users tend to take a dim view of this behaviour.
dang 5y ago
You broke the site guidelines with this comment too. Please read them to the end: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

frakkingcylons 5y ago

If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and they'll look at the data.

_mwza 5y ago

If you think this is 'conspiracy' talk - enjoy this quote from Satya Nadella: > In fact, this morning, I was reading a news article in Hacker News, which is a community where we have been working hard to make sure that Azure is growing in popularity and I was pleasantly surprised to see that we have made a lot of progress in some sense that at least basically said that we are neck to neck with Amazon when it comes to even lead developers as represented in that community. So we have more work to do, but we are making progress on all dimensions. https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-corp-msft-q1-2019-005545657.html https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-corp-msft-q1-201... EDIT: I don't mean this to be an indictment of the moderation on HN - on the contrary, I think an amazing job is done to balance out this stuff. It's just crazy to realize that corporate efforts on HN are important enough to mention on an earnings call!

Sholmesy 5y ago
Wow, how brazen. Everyone knows this happens on any forum with sufficient popularity, but it's striking to see it openly admitted.

dang 5y ago

> These comments are astroturfed af. Even a slightly critical comment is receiving tonnes of downvotes one minute after being posted. You broke the site guidelines badly with this, as did everyone who upvoted it. Please read the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. They contain: "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 hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data." We have that rule for good reason, as I've explained ad nauseum over many years: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... including yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27271356 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27271356 I looked at the data and saw no evidence that the comments are astroturfed, let alone "af". Perhaps I'm missing the obvious? In that case these astroturfers must be devilishly clever—enough not to leave any of the traces that we look for—and also dumb enough to leave comments that readers will pick out as obviously astroturfed. More likely, though, you were doing what internet users commonly do, which is vastly over-weight the things they dislike and then read sinister interpretations into them. (See https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20dislike%20notice&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... for many past explanations.) The overwhelming majority of these interpretations have literally zero evidence, and they're deeply poisonous to forum threads. In the future, if you don't have evidence, please don't post any of these; and if you do have evidence, please email hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it. But people having different tastes in game engines does not count as evidence.

sombremesa 5y ago
I've edited my comment, still not sure it's compliant to the guidelines but probably better than the original.
- dang 5y ago
  I appreciate your wish to be more in keeping with the guidelines! And I hope I didn't come down on you too hard. The problem is really a co-creation between comments and upvotes, and the upvotes do the greater damage—but there's no way to reply directly to them. Your edit is still not in keeping though, because if you read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html to the second-last rule, you'll find: Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. Moreover, from what I've looked at in this thread, your comment appears to be false. Which critical comments are you talking about specifically?