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Tailscale has reached general availability

tailscale.com

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Re: Tailscale has reached general availability

#71

Post by dang »

dclusin wrote: post #20
armaxt wrote: post #10

I will get banned for this in a matter of minutes but I will say the truth to whoever think HN is fair. For the past 3 months, every, again EVERY post that was linked to Tailscale (not just the company domain but also the blog posts of the founders' websites), has gotten to the frontpage within minutes, with a full 100% hit rate. This cannot happen for any company, any project or anything else to be honest since ther…

If I google for "buy hacker news upvotes" I see someone selling them for $2. You don't need a network for it. If you spend time on your content marketing and you buy upvotes you'll get bumped to the front page and stay there. Tinfoil hat not necessary. When the HN plays favoritism in the vein of shilling for Y Combinator portfolio companies they make it fairly obvious to anybody paying attention. The portfolio compan…

Those spammers are ripping off their own customers. What actually happens when people use that service is that they get their sites and accounts banned. I can't claim this in all cases, because I don't have a list of all their customers, but we've done it dozens of times and we have much independent verification in the form of user confessions and mea culpas. (We're softies when it comes to forgiving people, by the way, as long as they tell the truth.)

As I said recently, it's a cat and mouse game and we eat a lot of mice. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21916935

You guys should realize how much work we put into defending this site against manipulation. Especially if you ever find yourself wondering why there isn't much new feature development on HN.

Re: Tailscale has reached general availability

#72

Post by dang »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #70
dang wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will never happen, but that's not the reason. The reason is that voting data is an extremely intimate reflection of users' feelings and beliefs. None of us would want that picture of ourselves to become public, and I shudder to think of what people would do to each other with the information.

I agree with this. But do you think only showing the first X votes could help resolve it? If you want to keep your upvote private, don't upvote if there are < X votes.

That would discourage people from upvoting new stories, and sites like HN already struggle to get enough attention on the /newest page.

Re: Tailscale has reached general availability

#73

Post by dang »

api wrote: post #49
TechBro8615 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great idea, but will never happen because all the YC founders would be against it for obvious reasons. EDIT: Slightly altering it a bit. What if only the first 50 upvotes were public?

Everyone knows the site is partial to YC companies. It's an open secret. I consider it part of the "trade" in exchange for running a decent board without any ads or surveillance monetization. They're doing this for a reason, and it's to pump their brand. Hell they could just tag articles related to YC companies with a special color and pin them for a bit. I'd be fine with that.

I'm not sure why you're feeling like this is secret when we make a point of explicitly disclosing it, and always have. In fact, haven't you and I had exchanges about this years ago?

There are three formal things that HN gives back to YC in exchange for funding it: (1) job ads, which appear on the front page and later on https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs; (2) Launch HNs for YC startups, which appear on the front page and later on https://news.ycombinator.com/launches; (3) YC alumni usernames display in orange to other YC alumni (though not to themselves, which has led to a stream of emails over the years).

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

We explicitly don't do anything beyond that to favor YC or YC companies on HN, though we don't draw lines to exclude anything either, because YC-related people and content are an inseparable part of the community here.

I really need to add this to the FAQ though.

Re: Tailscale has reached general availability

#74

Post by _2d30 »

armaxt wrote: post #47
kyrra wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess? The people involved at Tailscale. Two of the founders (Avery Pennarun and David Crawshaw) are former Googler's that had a lot of respect within the company (I loved both of their G+ posts internally). Brad Fitzpatrick also recently joined them. They are then building the security model that Google uses[0], but trying to get it to other companies. I think the concept of BeyondCorp is pretty amazing and a gre…

Again, my argument is simple, how can EVERY post about any certain thing (not just for a _for-profit_ company like Tailscale but in general) can go to the frontpage within the first minutes every time for more than 10 times in a row over the short course of the past 3 months in a website that has the reputation of near impossibility to have your post on the frontpage even once except maybe for SHOW HN threads and whe…

Is there documentation for "EVERY"?

I looked via a simple algolia search for "tailscale" and found relatively minimal posts but also a number with very few upvotes: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re: Tailscale has reached general availability

#75

Post by armaxt »

dang wrote: post #64
armaxt wrote: post #10

I will get banned for this in a matter of minutes but I will say the truth to whoever think HN is fair. For the past 3 months, every, again EVERY post that was linked to Tailscale (not just the company domain but also the blog posts of the founders' websites), has gotten to the frontpage within minutes, with a full 100% hit rate. This cannot happen for any company, any project or anything else to be honest since ther…

> Thank you HN for proving me right You've been proven nothing of the sort. I buried your post and the submission itself while investigating this claim, even though you've been trolling HN threads with these rants for weeks now, using multiple accounts to do it, ignoring our requests to stop breaking the site guidelines, and barraging us with ranty emails to boot. I've looked closely at the data and found no evidence…

Trolling how? You banned me for saying the truth and I just used my other account to say it again out loud. You're favoring a certain people over the rest of us. There are literally tens of thousands of founders and entrepreenures here, each and every one of them put their blood and sweat for years into something he belives is the most important thing for the world and not even 1% of their posts get to the frontpage after years of trying. Tailscale's posts, very surprisingly yet coincidentally, get to the front page every single time except for exactly one exception.

These are the posts and all of them got to the front page within minutes by accounts that do not belong to the founders even though the founders very _coincidentally_ happen to exist during the submissions and reply to comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22759882 3 hours ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22652797 10 days ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22644357 12 days ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22644357 13 days ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22585782 17 days ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22571597 20 days ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22408269 38 days ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22192588 63 days ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21708483 3 months ago

6 posts on the frontpage in less than 3 weeks for a 1 year old company hardly known by anybody with a 100% hit rate?

not to mention the deliberate and swift hijacking of literally every WireGuard post to promote this company

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22724768 3 days ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22724768 4 days ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22464765 1 month ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22176032 2 months ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21741133 4 months ago

It seems _nothing_ is sufficient nor can prove anything for you since you're committed to continue giving them a free publicity for some reason.

Re: Tailscale has reached general availability

#76

Post by armaxt »

_2d30 wrote: post #74
armaxt wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, my argument is simple, how can EVERY post about any certain thing (not just for a _for-profit_ company like Tailscale but in general) can go to the frontpage within the first minutes every time for more than 10 times in a row over the short course of the past 3 months in a website that has the reputation of near impossibility to have your post on the frontpage even once except maybe for SHOW HN threads and whe…

Is there documentation for "EVERY"? I looked via a simple algolia search for "tailscale" and found relatively minimal posts but also a number with very few upvotes: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

my reply is here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22762174 not every post about their company contains the word Tailscale in the title.

Re: Tailscale has reached general availability

#77

Post by dang »

nubela wrote: post #11

Is talescale really that popular? Who are upvoting these articles?

Legitimate, longstanding HN users are upvoting these articles, so as far as I can tell the answer to your question is a simple yes.

More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22762894

Re: Tailscale has reached general availability

#78

Post by dang »

_2d30 wrote: post #74
armaxt wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, my argument is simple, how can EVERY post about any certain thing (not just for a _for-profit_ company like Tailscale but in general) can go to the frontpage within the first minutes every time for more than 10 times in a row over the short course of the past 3 months in a website that has the reputation of near impossibility to have your post on the frontpage even once except maybe for SHOW HN threads and whe…

Is there documentation for "EVERY"? I looked via a simple algolia search for "tailscale" and found relatively minimal posts but also a number with very few upvotes: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

The "every" claim is false. This is a single user's personal war which has for whatever reason gotten trained on this company for the time being, and will no doubt move to some other target, since it's had other targets in the past.

Re: Tailscale has reached general availability

#79

Post by dang »

armaxt wrote: post #17
cbg0 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having your friends upvote your posts on HN doesn't mean HN "favors" you.

Even if it is only as innocent as having your friends mass upvoting every thread of yours, then this is an outright exploitation of HN rules. Again never happened that a company, especially a company that was started a few months ago and hardly known by anybody, gets to the frontpage with a 100% hit rate for more than 10 times in less than 3 months.

Sure, that's very much against HN's rules. Also against HN's rules is posting accusations about these things without evidence. I've looked extensively into these cases, mainly because you've drummed up such a fuss about them with your various accounts. I found zero evidence of abuse. All the data indicates that these threads have been upvoted by serious, longstanding HN community members are just genuinely interested in the topic—probably because of the lineage of the founders, who are well known to this community and whose work many people like to follow.

You've now crossed way beyond the point of trolling, including barraging us with hostile emails, and it's time to drop it and move on.

Re: Tailscale has reached general availability

#80

Post by armaxt »

dang wrote: post #78
_2d30 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there documentation for "EVERY"? I looked via a simple algolia search for "tailscale" and found relatively minimal posts but also a number with very few upvotes: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

The "every" claim is false. This is a single user's personal war which has for whatever reason gotten trained on this company for the time being, and will no doubt move to some other target, since it's had other targets in the past.

The "every" claim is correct if you subtract this one exception https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22618517 which happens to be the least interesting post that really won't do much help for the company. Otherwise I stated all links above and you won't reply to it. And the real question that you still won't answer, how many very young/unknown companies have their posts on the HN's frontpage more than 4 times in less than a month with a 100% hit rate? give me other examples so that we know this is really so natural.
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