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Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News

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Re: Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News

#111

Post by at_a_remove »

For a long time, I noticed that, if I made a comment about Windows LTSC/LTSB, it would get downvoted heavily, and that there was a timing pattern to it.

Also, there's a certain set of topics where I can watch the tally go, very predictably -- up, then it gets smashed, and then finally there's some Johnny Come Latelies who vote up again.

Personally, agreement is easy and congruent ("This is correct"); disagreement is quite different ("This is incorrect, and here's why ..."). I think you ought to be able to "agree" with an upvote, but disagreement? That's when words are more useful. Downvotes are too easily brigaded and provide nothing in the way of discussion.

Re: Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News

#112

Post by sdenton4 »

mercurialsolo wrote: post #18

Is there a way to identify this behaviour? I am all for a platform which leans in on authentic discovery. ProductHunt and Reddit have long since been lost causes. HN did seem like holding out. Being asked to defend your work in public and why it's worth being upvoted or talked about is something that folks building should have to go through.

Yes, but the techniques are typically close guarded secrets, to keep the antagonists guessing.

Re: Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News

#113

Post by tough »

Grimburger wrote: post #96
geraldwhen wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Votes and fake engagement keeps your post on front page longer, which spurs more organic interaction. This has been marketing 101 for at least a decade. Reddit, hacker news, any site with user content is bought and paid for.

A warning for people that talking about and linking the reddit votes/user markets while on reddit leads to an automatic sitewide ban. I lost 10 year old account by offhandedly mentioning it existed in a thread like this criticising the behaviour. It's weird they don't want to talk about it but I do understand not linking it. There's mod accounts to some very big national subs up for sale.

Would you mind linking it here? HN seems like one of the bastions of free speech, I don't frequent reddit much but I wonder what shenanigans are up there, have seen some wild shit with even companies -stealing- subreddits from the creators lmao

Re: Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News

#114

Post by Zamicol »

6510 wrote: post #105
Mochsner wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decentralized hackernews/reddit of the future (which can't do this) will need some sort of weighted vote system...

This is actually the only challenge. Building a [say] p2p search engine is much easier than people think but ranking results is a pain.

I think this is solved by "authenticated atomic action", where users sign individual interactions instead of trusting login servers. In this case, each upvote, downvote, and comment must be cryptographically signed.

Once user action is signed, trust must be assigned to networks of users. (Of course, individual users can be trusted, but it would be easier to manage if users are bundled into networks somehow.)

Key management is the hard problem for this to work. User need to be able to have many keys that are revocable. Blockchains like Ethereum are advocating for chain centralized solutions, but I see no reason why that must be the case. It can be done, from top to bottom, in a totally distributed way. From the blockchain perspective, a "multi-chain" solution is the right one.

Re: Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News

#115

Post by effingwewt »

jwestbury wrote: post #84
Zaskoda wrote: post #68

I'm going to use this as an excuse to springboard off on a tangent I've been thinking a lot about. I think my social media story might be pretty common. Early on, all my social graphs across various platforms were well managed mappings of my real life friends. Today, all my social graphs are a mess. Platforms seem to push to make it easier to discover and find new friends. I want the opposite of this. I want to have…

> But it would connect us more closely with our real world social network. But the Internet is also the real world, yes? I'm not sure trivialising Internet-based relationships is the solution to a real problem.

Most definitely not, op even gave a direct example.

Also you have to consider what we used to call keyboard kourage. Many people will say things online they never would in real life.

To quote Mike Tyson- 'Social media made you all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it'.

Re: Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News

#117

Post by johnea »

version_five wrote: post #15

If you troll around in "New" for long enough you'll see threads where some version of this happens - though it's impossible to tell of they are bought upvotes, fake accounts made by the poster, or just friends that were asked to come and post. You'll see some mediocre SaaS thing that's posted here and on Product hunt and a bunch of comments from new users like "Wow so exciting, great job!". They usually get flagged q…

Isn't this how 90% of the www works?
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