Ask HN: Are there paid commenters on HN? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Are there paid commenters on HN?

#11

Post by 1_player » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 5:52 AM UTC

Paid by whom? There are companies and employees on HN posting, commenting and promoting their business and services, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Is someone paying to get upvoted? Almost certainly, but I doubt it's worth a lot here where the sorting algorithm is much more opaque than Reddit. On Reddit getting to the top is just a numbers game.

Also, even though there's far too much political posts on HN, they're the minority and I can't see a reason for some secret government agency to pay staff to change our views about the political world. Reddit is much more politicised, and it'd be naive not to assume every major government has a propaganda team of Reddit posters.

(I'm using Reddit as another example of popularity-contest forum like HN is)

Re: Ask HN: Are there paid commenters on HN?

#12

Post by kkjjkgjjgg » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 5:58 AM UTC

jdhendrickson wrote: post #7

There has been an obvious influx of paid accounts in my opinion. The quality of discourse has dropped. I often check an account and notice it was not active for a substantial period of time before a sudden change in tone is noticed. Seeing the same anti-vax talking points (for instance) spread from Reddit to here has been upsetting. The main difference I have noticed is the responses here are more sound technically,…

Out of curiosity, who would pay people for pushing anti-vax talking points?

Re: Ask HN: Are there paid commenters on HN?

#13

Post by minimaxir » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 5:59 AM UTC

l8rlump wrote: post #3

minimaxir wrote: post #2

Unlike chronological internet forums where all opinions must be heard, it's very difficult to successfully astroturf an internet forum that self-polices with upvotes and downvotes. EDIT: In the case where someone says something against common perception, downvotes in particular deemphasize it (turning the comment gray on HN, collapsing it on Reddit) as this comment unintentionally demonstrates, thus why astroturfing…

Is the voting system not susceptible to meddling?

Susceptible in theory, infeasible in practice for forums of a large enough size, as there are enough organic votes to counteract shenanigans.

In the case of more low-key manipulation, on Hacker News in particular there's flagging which shuts down shenanigans more effectively if needed.

Re: Ask HN: Are there paid commenters on HN?

#14

Post by minimaxir » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 6:03 AM UTC

speedgoose wrote: post #4

minimaxir wrote: post #2

Unlike chronological internet forums where all opinions must be heard, it's very difficult to successfully astroturf an internet forum that self-polices with upvotes and downvotes. EDIT: In the case where someone says something against common perception, downvotes in particular deemphasize it (turning the comment gray on HN, collapsing it on Reddit) as this comment unintentionally demonstrates, thus why astroturfing…

I don't know, Reddit has a lot of artrosurf. You can buy up votes and down votes very easily and you regularly see suspicious votes on some content.

Reddit posts can have very counterintuitive voting patterns, but that alone not evidence of astroturfing (coordinated brigading is a different issue).

Which content did you have in mind?

Re: Ask HN: Are there paid commenters on HN?

#15

Post by sturza » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 6:03 AM UTC

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #12

jdhendrickson wrote: post #7

There has been an obvious influx of paid accounts in my opinion. The quality of discourse has dropped. I often check an account and notice it was not active for a substantial period of time before a sudden change in tone is noticed. Seeing the same anti-vax talking points (for instance) spread from Reddit to here has been upsetting. The main difference I have noticed is the responses here are more sound technically,…

Out of curiosity, who would pay people for pushing anti-vax talking points?

"They"

Re: Ask HN: Are there paid commenters on HN?

#16

Post by calvinmorrison » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 6:03 AM UTC

jdhendrickson wrote: post #7

There has been an obvious influx of paid accounts in my opinion. The quality of discourse has dropped. I often check an account and notice it was not active for a substantial period of time before a sudden change in tone is noticed. Seeing the same anti-vax talking points (for instance) spread from Reddit to here has been upsetting. The main difference I have noticed is the responses here are more sound technically,…

I do love the everyone who's antivax is a Russian troll talking point, since if it were true, I could delete Duolingo!

Re: Ask HN: Are there paid commenters on HN?

#17

Post by lmeyerov » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 6:03 AM UTC

I've seen what look like classic Russian+Chinese troll farm talking points & argument tactics. NLP can flag this, but without accompanying metadata for basic digital forensics, confidence is too hard for that vs a regular troll.

If into this sort of analytics, we are always looking for data engineers and data scientists for Project Domino - see our DefCon AIV keynote for more info.

Re: Ask HN: Are there paid commenters on HN?

#18

Post by minimaxir » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 6:04 AM UTC

jdhendrickson wrote: post #7

There has been an obvious influx of paid accounts in my opinion. The quality of discourse has dropped. I often check an account and notice it was not active for a substantial period of time before a sudden change in tone is noticed. Seeing the same anti-vax talking points (for instance) spread from Reddit to here has been upsetting. The main difference I have noticed is the responses here are more sound technically,…

Unfortunately, the antivaxx sentiments that occasionally pop up on HN recently aren't paid for.

Re: Ask HN: Are there paid commenters on HN?

#19

Post by reilly3000 » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 6:05 AM UTC

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #12

jdhendrickson wrote: post #7

There has been an obvious influx of paid accounts in my opinion. The quality of discourse has dropped. I often check an account and notice it was not active for a substantial period of time before a sudden change in tone is noticed. Seeing the same anti-vax talking points (for instance) spread from Reddit to here has been upsetting. The main difference I have noticed is the responses here are more sound technically,…

Out of curiosity, who would pay people for pushing anti-vax talking points?

It’s a full time job for many people in Eastern Europe and other places. It’s something of a weapon of modern warfare, and really quite effective. A cohesive US response could have saved at least 500k lives. As a military power we’re somewhat undefeatable, so sewing division is an alternative. Who is paying the bills? I’ll leave that exercise for the reader.

Re: Ask HN: Are there paid commenters on HN?

#20

Post by csbartus » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 6:06 AM UTC

I don't know, but I don't really read the comments here any more.

A while ago the comments were the gold, now I can't really get them. In my subjective experience, contradictory comments (to the post) became the most popular. That doesn't make sense. You can't contradict always to anything.

So HN became like any other new site: I'm skimming through the headlines in a minute, and done.