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There were no comments in this thread besides the author's when this made it to the front page. This was very obviously artificially promoted (probably via bots
by suhputt 8mo ago
There were no comments in this thread besides the author's when this made it to the front page. This was very obviously artificially promoted (probably via bots) to the front page - this has become a very noticeable pattern in recent times.
- ericpaulsen 8mo agoIf you have any evidence of artificial promotion, please share.
- suhputt 8mo agoalready have :)
- rob 8mo agoIt's funny because the bot's owner got caught and is just entering "manual mode" to try and do damage control. You'll probably never see another post from "eric" again. Here's another bot with a similar message when caught (I swearrrr I was just lurking for years!): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46936477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46936477 In this thread, it managed to trick dang and he started interacting with it even though I pointed out it was posting comments exactly 45 seconds apart: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46886719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46886719 And of course the last post where the bot's owner admits everything: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46901199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46901199 --- I think this is showing that they're not just running these things on their own but watching over them and checking when people call them out so they can intervene.