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To Keep Track of Reddit Conversations Around NYT Articles, We Built a Slack Bot

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Re: To Keep Track of Reddit Conversations Around NYT Articles, We Built a Slack Bot

#11

Post by dsfyu404ed »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #10

I would wager they are doing the same thing for HN. Also of note, ever since I started coming back here for the first time in several years, I couldn’t help but notice the high percentage of NYT articles posted here. I’m not saying they don’t fit the HN mold/interest bucket, but I was just surprised to see so many headlines from them here, on HN, so regularly. I think NYT is playing a strong grassroots/AstroTurf/soci…

They probably have a bunch of sites they do this to. Each time someone discovers a new one they probably create another config for that site and then whenever a link is posted the bot spams the channel with "hey, $author's article about $title" is being discussed on $site at $link2comments".

Re: To Keep Track of Reddit Conversations Around NYT Articles, We Built a Slack Bot

#12

Post by Causality1 »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #10

I would wager they are doing the same thing for HN. Also of note, ever since I started coming back here for the first time in several years, I couldn’t help but notice the high percentage of NYT articles posted here. I’m not saying they don’t fit the HN mold/interest bucket, but I was just surprised to see so many headlines from them here, on HN, so regularly. I think NYT is playing a strong grassroots/AstroTurf/soci…

HN punches above its weight class when it comes to influence so it's unsurprising the NYT wants to keep their visibility here high.

Re: To Keep Track of Reddit Conversations Around NYT Articles, We Built a Slack Bot

#13

Post by [deleted] »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #10

I would wager they are doing the same thing for HN. Also of note, ever since I started coming back here for the first time in several years, I couldn’t help but notice the high percentage of NYT articles posted here. I’m not saying they don’t fit the HN mold/interest bucket, but I was just surprised to see so many headlines from them here, on HN, so regularly. I think NYT is playing a strong grassroots/AstroTurf/soci…

[deleted]

Re: To Keep Track of Reddit Conversations Around NYT Articles, We Built a Slack Bot

#14

Post by GCA10 »

lallysingh wrote: post #4

The article's actual title is "To Keep Track of Reddit Conversations Around New York Times Articles, We Built a Slack Bot." There's some strong editorializing in this post's title.

There's always a shorter way to get key elements into a headline. How about:

To Track Reddit's Take on NYT Articles, We Built a Slack Bot

Re: To Keep Track of Reddit Conversations Around NYT Articles, We Built a Slack Bot

#15

Post by lucb1e »

ForHackernews wrote: post #2

Wait, Google doesn't support Perl?

The relevant part of the article, for those like myself who read the comments first:

> When I looked at the code, I realized I was not going to be able to reuse anything because it was written in Perl. My plan was to rely on many of Google’s managed services, which don’t support Perl.

I didn't know Google did shared hosting these days (like, PHP or whatever they do support, I knew about VPSes and hosted databases).

Re: To Keep Track of Reddit Conversations Around NYT Articles, We Built a Slack Bot

#16

Post by [deleted] »

whack wrote: post #8

It's interesting how "NYT tracks Reddit conversations" sounds so much less malevolent when you know exactly what they are doing and why. Ie, posting slack links of public Reddit threads so the article authors can see and participate in the resulting discussion.

[deleted]

Re: To Keep Track of Reddit Conversations Around NYT Articles, We Built a Slack Bot

#17

Post by scarejunba »

Causality1 wrote: post #12
ImprovedSilence wrote: post #10

I would wager they are doing the same thing for HN. Also of note, ever since I started coming back here for the first time in several years, I couldn’t help but notice the high percentage of NYT articles posted here. I’m not saying they don’t fit the HN mold/interest bucket, but I was just surprised to see so many headlines from them here, on HN, so regularly. I think NYT is playing a strong grassroots/AstroTurf/soci…

HN punches above its weight class when it comes to influence so it's unsurprising the NYT wants to keep their visibility here high.

About 90% of the time when some group of people claim they have influence they have fuck-all influence. Reminds me of the time some 4chan users tried to have ReCaptcha label things 'penis' because they had this inflated sense of influence.

ReCaptcha said that it was trivial to handle the increased traffic and that it was not only auto-filtered out but also a drop in the bucket.

Everyone always thinks they're hot shit. But the world is a big place.

Re: To Keep Track of Reddit Conversations Around NYT Articles, We Built a Slack Bot

#18

Post by rchaud »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #10

I would wager they are doing the same thing for HN. Also of note, ever since I started coming back here for the first time in several years, I couldn’t help but notice the high percentage of NYT articles posted here. I’m not saying they don’t fit the HN mold/interest bucket, but I was just surprised to see so many headlines from them here, on HN, so regularly. I think NYT is playing a strong grassroots/AstroTurf/soci…

There would probably have been more WSJ submissions if it weren't for the paywall. NYT's paywall at least offers a few free articles each month.

The other reason NYT links appear often is because there just aren't that many outlets doing journalism (and followup articles) on areas that are of interest to HN's audience.

Re: To Keep Track of Reddit Conversations Around NYT Articles, We Built a Slack Bot

#19

Post by lil_tee »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #10

I would wager they are doing the same thing for HN. Also of note, ever since I started coming back here for the first time in several years, I couldn’t help but notice the high percentage of NYT articles posted here. I’m not saying they don’t fit the HN mold/interest bucket, but I was just surprised to see so many headlines from them here, on HN, so regularly. I think NYT is playing a strong grassroots/AstroTurf/soci…

FWIW, nytimes.com accounts for ~4% of all posts that appear on the HN homepage: https://toddwschneider.com/dashboards/hacker-news-trends/?q=...

Re: To Keep Track of Reddit Conversations Around NYT Articles, We Built a Slack Bot

#20

Post by rchaud »

whack wrote: post #8

It's interesting how "NYT tracks Reddit conversations" sounds so much less malevolent when you know exactly what they are doing and why. Ie, posting slack links of public Reddit threads so the article authors can see and participate in the resulting discussion.

Even the editorialized title doesn't sound all that negative. Editorial teams reading public forums to see how their articles are being interpreted and discussed sounds pretty normal.
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