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Ask HN: The HN Mind, can it it be gamed?
Hi,
ok, after some testing I found out that headlines are a joke on HN, not because they get re-edited by admins, or because you cannot edit it yourself afterwards. The real reason is that people hunt keywords!
The time you submit a headline is very important and often leads to higher ranking, because respecting peak times, when most people use HN actively will give you more surface to positive ratings. Landing on the frontpage becomes easier that way. There are already SaaS WebApps for Twitter and Facebook which do this type of thing, it's no different on HN.
The HN Mind, can actually be deconstructed more or less easily by mining stats/keywords and relations. And what I have found to be my truth is that the HN Mind chooses what it wants (everybody has it's own truth, but the collective follows the most popular spur, just like ants do). And Fronpage posts have one thing in common, there are headlines with similar topics, that reflect the current trend of interest.
Do you remember the fake MongoDB Post that hit the frontpage and made a lot of HN folks believe in it initially, until someone released that it was a hoax? This made the HN Mind perplex and more careful for some time. But this careful behavior faded when there weren't enough stimulants (hoax posts are rare).
What I'm saying here is that the HN Mind can be gamed and that popular headlines can put it into believing something specific as valuable. A potential attacker could benefit by this situation through systematically using posts to create false beliefs or valuations. Maybe that's not a weakness in HN alone, but the humand mind. Our decision making process can be manipulated [1]. We inveest the same way monkeys do [2]. Politicians actively use this weakness [3] by using a manipulative language and broad media coverage, they also hire "specialits" that help to lie for better outcomes/rankings. HN has no measure, policies to prevent Social Engineering.
As the HN user @unimpressive mentioned, it is possible to persuade people with weak arguments . . . [4] This case is something that many hackers and engineers out there have been through. Altough you had a good and strong argument, people didn't take you more serious, but accepted the case as closed. Yes this is a weak argument supporting the claim that weak arguments can be superior to strong arguments, but let's not get fooled by it and have a quick read of the references yourself.
[1] http://monkeybiz.stanford.edu/Rorie_1TICS.pdf
[2] http://phys.org/news/2013-09-monkey-business-primitive-wealth.html
[3] http://sablon.sdu.edu.tr/dergi/sosbilder/dosyalar/19_9.pdf
[4] http://healthyinfluence.com/wordpress/2013/09/13/persuading-with-weak-arguments-maybe/
- majani 13y agoYes, HN can be gamed. Evidence? This pointless post creeping up to the front page solely due to a controversial heading.
- X4 13y agoI like the way you critically assess articles and it's respected when there is no substance or evidence. You're reading the references, but cannot see an evidence. How does your claim of pointlessness have a proof?
- unimpressive 13y agoYou can game it further with human actors in the comments.
- benologist 13y agoMajor news outlets have turned gaming social sites into a huge business - years ago it was revealed HuffPo A/B tested their headlines based on how much traffic they pull. These days I suspect that's entirely standard but even if the tech rags are still lagging behind you can see them desperately pandering for pageviews pretty transparently - like Ars syndicating StackOverflow, or the sheer volume of viral-hit-or-miss garbage that AOL's giant content farm spews out across their network (eg 39 x iPhone 5c/s articles between just TechCrunch and Engadget since being announced!). Business Insider uses Optimizely to optimize the stream of pure shit they emit.