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What's up with the sock puppet users in this thread? All the green users were created four hours ago. This is pretty sketchy.

by kmfrk 14y ago

ketprince 14y ago
I don't know about the users but the site is genuine... it's a funded start-up
- dangrossman 14y ago
  A social media service which needs to promote itself with artificial conversation between sock puppet accounts on social media is not "genuine". Genuine means sincere and authentic, and this company appears to be neither. I try virtually every new advertising startup I come across on HN, but I won't be trusting my credit card to this one.
- aw3c2 14y ago
  You are one of sockpuppets by the way. Didn't you know?
  - kmfrk 14y ago
    Look for the origami figures!
jklio 14y ago
Amusingly I am still green and agree with you that it is sketchy. A wave of new accounts for a company that specializes in inserting product placement into what people consider to be normal communication... And it's one thing to make an account to ask a question about a service - that's plausible - it's quite another to make an account to say "nice site!". Mods should investigate.
- kmfrk 14y ago
  What really bothers me is that it seems to have worked in pushing the link to the front page of Hacker News. After copious experiences with trigger happy algorithms flagging me as a false-positive spammer, I am surprised that something as blatantly conspicuous as this managed to get so far - regardless of who orchestrated it.
  - dangrossman 14y ago
    It didn't last very long there. Once the sockpuppetry became evident, it was likely flagged by a few people, and is now nowhere to be found among the top 100 stories, whereas a highly voted front page story typically stays for 10+ hours. The user moderation system works.
  - jklio 14y ago
    It's especially interesting as my capacity to vote seemed to only kicked in today after a week of being green. The last week my votes seemed to go through but then the arrow reappeared on a later page load and the pages weren't in my saved stories. So it has to have made it to the front page without the help of the current commenting socks, but with votes from elsewhere (or even genuine users I suppose, but the socks put a big question mark over that).

What's up with the sock puppet users in this thread? All the green users were created four hours ago. This is pretty sketchy.

by kmfrk 14y ago

What's up with the sock puppet users in this thread? All the green users were created four hours ago. This is pretty sketchy.

ketprince 14y ago

I don't know about the users but the site is genuine... it's a funded start-up

dangrossman 14y ago
A social media service which needs to promote itself with artificial conversation between sock puppet accounts on social media is not "genuine". Genuine means sincere and authentic, and this company appears to be neither. I try virtually every new advertising startup I come across on HN, but I won't be trusting my credit card to this one.
aw3c2 14y ago
You are one of sockpuppets by the way. Didn't you know?
- kmfrk 14y ago
  Look for the origami figures!

jklio 14y ago

Amusingly I am still green and agree with you that it is sketchy. A wave of new accounts for a company that specializes in inserting product placement into what people consider to be normal communication... And it's one thing to make an account to ask a question about a service - that's plausible - it's quite another to make an account to say "nice site!". Mods should investigate.

kmfrk 14y ago
What really bothers me is that it seems to have worked in pushing the link to the front page of Hacker News. After copious experiences with trigger happy algorithms flagging me as a false-positive spammer, I am surprised that something as blatantly conspicuous as this managed to get so far - regardless of who orchestrated it.
- dangrossman 14y ago
  It didn't last very long there. Once the sockpuppetry became evident, it was likely flagged by a few people, and is now nowhere to be found among the top 100 stories, whereas a highly voted front page story typically stays for 10+ hours. The user moderation system works.
- jklio 14y ago
  It's especially interesting as my capacity to vote seemed to only kicked in today after a week of being green. The last week my votes seemed to go through but then the arrow reappeared on a later page load and the pages weren't in my saved stories. So it has to have made it to the front page without the help of the current commenting socks, but with votes from elsewhere (or even genuine users I suppose, but the socks put a big question mark over that).