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I found black-hat content marketers: sockpuppet bloggers, fake Reddit/HN accts

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Re: I found black-hat content marketers: sockpuppet bloggers, fake Reddit/HN accts

#191

Post by ratww »

fogetti wrote: post #174
nindalf wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN hands out shadowbans like candy for people suspected of vote manipulation. I completely agree with this approach because it keeps the site clean. An interesting question to ask is if HN owes it to its users to be more transparent about responses like shadow banning and provide ways to appeal such responses. Most of would say no, the current approach is working for us and we should keep it going. But then I wonder…

I wonder how can shadowban work at all to begin with. It only takes 10 seconds to open a public thread in an incognito window and confirm if voting, commenting, etc indeed happened as the commenter intended or was it only happening in a private echo chamber.

One way I fixed this in a small gamedev forum I help maintain was by letting users view shadowbanned comments created by the same IP. There's still the chance of the user using Tor/VPNs, but it's rarer.

Shadowban is not perfect by all means, but it's still a good deterrent in my experience.

Re: I found black-hat content marketers: sockpuppet bloggers, fake Reddit/HN accts

#192

Post by cblconfederate »

ryandward wrote: post #57

I guess it isn't news to me, but I'm running out of places for legit conversations and product recommendations.

It's a constant uphill battle, but it seems the harder a platform is to use, the less likely it is to gather big crowd and thus the marketers. So perhaps an old style BBS, IRC , or a newsgroupserver, and a client built intentionally with bad UI

Re: I found black-hat content marketers: sockpuppet bloggers, fake Reddit/HN accts

#193

Post by littlestymaar »

fogetti wrote: post #174
nindalf wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN hands out shadowbans like candy for people suspected of vote manipulation. I completely agree with this approach because it keeps the site clean. An interesting question to ask is if HN owes it to its users to be more transparent about responses like shadow banning and provide ways to appeal such responses. Most of would say no, the current approach is working for us and we should keep it going. But then I wonder…

I wonder how can shadowban work at all to begin with. It only takes 10 seconds to open a public thread in an incognito window and confirm if voting, commenting, etc indeed happened as the commenter intended or was it only happening in a private echo chamber.

I guess it works well against non-malicious jerks. They come, they don't get the social reward they are expecting, and leave. And maybe later they will retry but with a better behavior.

And maybe the malicious/non-malicious ratio is low enough to make this method efficient.

Re: I found black-hat content marketers: sockpuppet bloggers, fake Reddit/HN accts

#194

Post by danimal88 »

tptacek wrote: post #74
chrisweekly wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because discussing the moderation system is strongly discouraged and leads to downvotes.

No, that's not it; it's because anti-abuse is a cat-and-mouse game, so while you can discuss it (in an appropriate setting like a junky meta thread you didn't start), you can't expect HN to be forthcoming with details, because those details lower costs for abusers, and maximizing costs is the whole ballgame. Kibitzing HN moderation itself is one of our oldest pastimes.

Its funny because the most hardcore in open source and security would argue that good techniques don't rely on obfuscation and secrets because those cats can get out of the bag. Never purrsonally subscribed to those as I agree with the cat and mouse perspective. Information assymetry is effective.

Re: I found black-hat content marketers: sockpuppet bloggers, fake Reddit/HN accts

#195

Post by cblconfederate »

twmahna wrote: post #31

Is this actually news to people? This has been happening for decades. The purpose is largely for SEO / sometimes for actual traffic. Just go google "private blog networks" (pbn) or "link farm".

The internet used to be a suspicious, sarcastic, and rather disbelieving crowd, but that has changed for newer generations. I do thing there are many people for whom this is news. There 's just too much fluff feel-good marketing content going around that one forgets the motives behind it. Old style blogs and comments made it obvious that there were tons of spam, nowadays it has gone covert because major distribution platforms remove obvious spam.

Unfortunately this means that if you want to promote your side project, there's just no way, most topical subreddits will flag u as spam, and you are left with niches like r/sideproject. Or you do this kind of social media/content marketing

Re: I found black-hat content marketers: sockpuppet bloggers, fake Reddit/HN accts

#196

Post by ratww »

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #188
krageon wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has already been pointed out that discussing anti-astroturfing measures in detail is not done, for reasons that have been explained. It doesn't seem reasonable to keep demanding explanations given what has been said before.

"The difference is evidence, and that's what we require." So how do I supply the required?

You can always contact the moderators in private if you're unsure, or do lots of research, like Troy did here.

Re: I found black-hat content marketers: sockpuppet bloggers, fake Reddit/HN accts

#197

Post by littlestymaar »

ratww wrote: post #191
fogetti wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how can shadowban work at all to begin with. It only takes 10 seconds to open a public thread in an incognito window and confirm if voting, commenting, etc indeed happened as the commenter intended or was it only happening in a private echo chamber.

One way I fixed this in a small gamedev forum I help maintain was by letting users view shadowbanned comments created by the same IP. There's still the chance of the user using Tor/VPNs, but it's rarer. Shadowban is not perfect by all means, but it's still a good deterrent in my experience.

IP-based recognition is annoying for people leaving in third world countries[1] though, because there little IPV4, they are many behind the same NAT.

Also, with tethering it's really easy to circumvent, without needing a VPN.

[1]: IIRC, the whole Laos only has a /32 subnet… yes you read it right: a single IPV4 address for end entire country. And many country only have a few /16.

Re: I found black-hat content marketers: sockpuppet bloggers, fake Reddit/HN accts

#198

Post by ratww »

littlestymaar wrote: post #197
ratww wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way I fixed this in a small gamedev forum I help maintain was by letting users view shadowbanned comments created by the same IP. There's still the chance of the user using Tor/VPNs, but it's rarer. Shadowban is not perfect by all means, but it's still a good deterrent in my experience.

IP-based recognition is annoying for people leaving in third world countries[1] though, because there little IPV4, they are many behind the same NAT. Also, with tethering it's really easy to circumvent, without needing a VPN. [1]: IIRC, the whole Laos only has a /32 subnet… yes you read it right: a single IPV4 address for end entire country. And many country only have a few /16.

Please read my message again. I'm not restricting anything and there's nothing to be circumvented, it's about letting unlogged/anonymous users view more stuff to deter detection of shadowbanning.

Re: I found black-hat content marketers: sockpuppet bloggers, fake Reddit/HN accts

#199

Post by fogetti »

ratww wrote: post #191
fogetti wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how can shadowban work at all to begin with. It only takes 10 seconds to open a public thread in an incognito window and confirm if voting, commenting, etc indeed happened as the commenter intended or was it only happening in a private echo chamber.

One way I fixed this in a small gamedev forum I help maintain was by letting users view shadowbanned comments created by the same IP. There's still the chance of the user using Tor/VPNs, but it's rarer. Shadowban is not perfect by all means, but it's still a good deterrent in my experience.

This doesn't make any sense. Most IPv4 addresses change every day if not multiple times during the day. I guess you can only filter the dumbest of the dumbest this way. And if someone has the wit to open an incognito window it doesn't take a genius to notice that he can only see the same day's comments.

Re: I found black-hat content marketers: sockpuppet bloggers, fake Reddit/HN accts

#200

Post by droffel »

krageon wrote: post #185
throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDK. Guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Be kind. Please don't sneer Please don't post shallow dismissals But downvotes are sometimes used unkindly, dismissively and as a way to supress a different view (which may or may not be justified). You nuke me and say why, I'm happy - we can talk! I can learn something new! Downvoting factual posts silently is... frustrating. And ill mannered.

In aggregate downvoted posts are practically always low-effort (or sometimes just really unhinged or otherwise patently wrong), so I'm not convinced that downvotes being used unkindly is a big problem.

Downvoting is also restricted to accounts who exceed a point threshold. I think that particular feature (ensuring people who can downvote at least have some level of trust within the site) has been critical to prevent hive mind-style downvoting. I rarely see downvoted comments where I don't understand why they were downvoted.
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