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Thank HN: My startup was born here and is now 10 years old

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Thank HN: My startup was born here and is now 10 years old

#71

Post by npiit »

kossTKR wrote: post #50

What's going on here exactly? Why does this post have an insane amount of upvotes and like 50 posts only with text like "Congratz my man!" or other people who seem to know this dude and contribute with nothing?

I'd have agreed until I inspected the guy's business and it looks very established. 10 years old. 1 million visits in the last 3 months according to similarweb and nothing really suspicious if you look up his company in hn.algolia.com. Your comment is kinda paranoid but I understand it. Just try to look up the algolia website if you're suspicious of any company's activity.

Re: Thank HN: My startup was born here and is now 10 years old

#72

Post by cheez »

kossTKR wrote: post #50

What's going on here exactly? Why does this post have an insane amount of upvotes and like 50 posts only with text like "Congratz my man!" or other people who seem to know this dude and contribute with nothing?

youre new, this is a YC classic

Re: Thank HN: My startup was born here and is now 10 years old

#73

Post by [deleted] »

nus07 wrote: post #67
searchableguy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the guidelines - Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data.

No offense but your account was created 18 days ago. Something seems very weird about this post.

[deleted]

Re: Thank HN: My startup was born here and is now 10 years old

#74

Post by dang »

OzzyB wrote: post #55
kossTKR wrote: post #50

What's going on here exactly? Why does this post have an insane amount of upvotes and like 50 posts only with text like "Congratz my man!" or other people who seem to know this dude and contribute with nothing?

What do you think is going on? The call went out to upvote and "Congrats" spam this thread -- just look at the comment history on those accounts -- all inactive/active at around the same time. I guess that's the lesson being taught here, have an army of sockpuppet accounts ready for your "Tell HN" thread and grow your business!

That's not accurate, and this comment breaks the site guidelines against making accusations of astroturfing and manipulation without evidence. Please stick to the rules when commenting here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

It's not ok to impugn someone's integrity just because of how something happens to look to you. The overwhelming majority of the time, these conclusions are wrong, it's the internet's fault for jumping to them, and they poison the community.

Real abuse exists, we do a lot to try to counteract it, and we crack down pretty hard when we find it. But there needs to be something objective to go on.

Re: Thank HN: My startup was born here and is now 10 years old

#75

Post by dang »

sedatk wrote: post #51
kossTKR wrote: post #50

What's going on here exactly? Why does this post have an insane amount of upvotes and like 50 posts only with text like "Congratz my man!" or other people who seem to know this dude and contribute with nothing?

HN don't let majority of the users downvote, that's what's going on.

There's nothing wrong with empty comments saying positive things like congratulations. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html, which was written well over 10 years ago.

It's not as if stories like this come up very often.

Re: Thank HN: My startup was born here and is now 10 years old

#76

Post by tomnipotent »

nus07 wrote: post #67
searchableguy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the guidelines - Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data.

No offense but your account was created 18 days ago. Something seems very weird about this post.

Yet your was only created 64 and has less post activity than the account you're responding to. Should we read too much into that?

Re: Thank HN: My startup was born here and is now 10 years old

#77

Post by dang »

nus07 wrote: post #67
searchableguy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the guidelines - Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data.

No offense but your account was created 18 days ago. Something seems very weird about this post.

Please don't. Plenty of new accounts are old users.

Re: Thank HN: My startup was born here and is now 10 years old

#78

Post by dang »

kossTKR wrote: post #50

What's going on here exactly? Why does this post have an insane amount of upvotes and like 50 posts only with text like "Congratz my man!" or other people who seem to know this dude and contribute with nothing?

It looks legit to me. Keep in mind that the earliest comments to appear in a thread are often the reflexive ones, because they take the least effort (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). In this case there isn't much to reflexively react negatively to, so there are a lot of congratulations.

I think this post is doing well because it combines two things that HN readers like a lot: (1) business success stories, as long as the succeeder is someone the reader identifies with; (2) all things meta. Meta is the crack of internet forums. Oh, and a runner-up: (3) references to old things. The passage of time is what confers internet legitimacy on things. So here we have a trifecta.

There isn't massive overlap between the congratulatory commenters and the users who upvoted the submission, and among those who did both, plenty are long-established HN users. This is not what manipulation tends to look like.

Re: Thank HN: My startup was born here and is now 10 years old

#79

Post by kossTKR »

dang wrote: post #78
kossTKR wrote: post #50

What's going on here exactly? Why does this post have an insane amount of upvotes and like 50 posts only with text like "Congratz my man!" or other people who seem to know this dude and contribute with nothing?

It looks legit to me. Keep in mind that the earliest comments to appear in a thread are often the reflexive ones, because they take the least effort ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... ). In this case there isn't much to reflexively react negatively to, so there are a lot of congratulations. I think this post is doing well because it combines two things that HN readers like a lot: (1) bu…

Those are some good points. As i said in another post, i have probably become a little too cynical after working in the field for so long - so congratulations to these dudes.

Re: Thank HN: My startup was born here and is now 10 years old

#80

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

OzzyB wrote: post #69
RussianCow wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just look at the comment history on those accounts -- all inactive/active at around the same time. What are you talking about? I just went through about half the accounts that have commented on here, and while a small handful do look suspicious, most are normal-looking accounts with over 100 rep. Maybe people are genuinely happy for the OP? Is that so hard to comprehend?

> and while a small handful do look suspicious Isn't that not what we're talking about? Maybe you weren't around to see all the "Congrats" comments and now the thread looks more legit -- I believe we call that "seeding", what do you call it?

Since there are 250 people at the company, maybe they all wanted to congratulate their CEO and some didn't have accounts yet.
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