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I find it unlikely, but not extremely so given the environment (HN). It's very plausible to me that these comments are organic and independent. We have already

I find it unlikely, but not extremely so given the environment (HN). It's very plausible to me that these comments are organic and independent. We have already had Patrick Collison and Brian Armstrong comment on this post (That I know of). I'm sure that many other high profile people in tech have since seen it as well. The timeframe is somewhat suss, but I don't find it unbelievable. E: other people also corroborate somewhat similar stories - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29389177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29389177 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29389191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29389191 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29389509 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29389509

Macha 5y ago
To be fair the others are also very low activity anonymous accounts created within the last 12 months.
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  This is not at all surprising given the dynamics of the internet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture). Longstanding, commenting users are incredibly rare in the scheme of things. E: active <-> commenting
  - Macha 5y ago
    Active users are disportionately represented amongst people actively commenting, however
    - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
      I don't understand your point here... Active users being disproportionately represented by people commenting is probably correct, but it doesn't provide any useful information about the minority of users who don't comment often. I'm saying that an account being mostly inactive (In terms of commenting) is not at all surprising. Someone could have been actively browsing HN for months/years without commenting, so I don't think comment activity is a good indicator of credibility when lurking is the default behaviour for almost all users. I wouldn't be surprised if the number of comments per user followed a power law distribution.
      - darawk 5y ago
        He's not saying its an indicator of credibility. He's speaking to the probability of two infrequent commenters commenting. The density of frequent commenters in all comments is very high.

Macha 5y ago

To be fair the others are also very low activity anonymous accounts created within the last 12 months.

ZephyrBlu 5y ago
This is not at all surprising given the dynamics of the internet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture). Longstanding, commenting users are incredibly rare in the scheme of things. E: active <-> commenting
- Macha 5y ago
  Active users are disportionately represented amongst people actively commenting, however
  - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
    I don't understand your point here... Active users being disproportionately represented by people commenting is probably correct, but it doesn't provide any useful information about the minority of users who don't comment often. I'm saying that an account being mostly inactive (In terms of commenting) is not at all surprising. Someone could have been actively browsing HN for months/years without commenting, so I don't think comment activity is a good indicator of credibility when lurking is the default behaviour for almost all users. I wouldn't be surprised if the number of comments per user followed a power law distribution.
    - darawk 5y ago
      He's not saying its an indicator of credibility. He's speaking to the probability of two infrequent commenters commenting. The density of frequent commenters in all comments is very high.