Spamming is a cost/benefit decision. The cost of spamming HN is insanely high (because any non-substantive low effort content gets downvoted and hidden, meaning

Spamming is a cost/benefit decision. The cost of spamming HN is insanely high (because any non-substantive low effort content gets downvoted and hidden, meaning you need to hire spammers or bots with CS PhDs essentially) and the benefit isn’t that high (because the moderation system works amazingly well and any spammy content, even if we’ll disguised, probably won’t last long). The same is not true of, say, Reddit, where you can build up karma posting jokes and cat pictures, and where there is higher mass market potential for shilling products. Even if you had a magic bot that evaded dang and all the downvoters, your ad for weight loss pills will fall on deaf ears. It’s just not the right audience.