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How we hack Hacker News and consistently hit the front page

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Re: How we hack Hacker News and consistently hit the front page

#121

Post by baobabKoodaa »

jamestimmins wrote: post #46
irrational wrote: post #36

While reading, I kept asking myself why someone would care about getting to the front page of HN (saving up this fake points to get something good?) until I reached: > Step 3: The secret sauce We always end with a section that is called: Final thoughts. This is your moment to shine and drop a punchline that talks about your product/service. And, there it is.

This isn't exactly a secret. Everyone who puts their own content on HN is hoping to get something from it, including companies who often put out high-value content (fly.io comes to mind).

Well, some people just like to be internet famous, without selling you a product.

Re: How we hack Hacker News and consistently hit the front page

#123

Post by Kaibeezy »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #115
dang wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Operyl correctly said, your account was rate limited because new accounts are subject to rate limits. Btw, could you please not create accounts for every few comments you post? This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have…

I never look at the name of the user posting a comment, just at the comment's content. Do people really remember names here? Just such as mine?)

Yep. And have posted a couple of times suggesting mild enhancements for those of us that do. I believe there are plug-in or extension type reader thingymabobs that help with that too.

Your name, alas, is not human-memorable. See also - https://xkcd.com/936/

Re: How we hack Hacker News and consistently hit the front page

#124

Post by tpoacher »

> Obviously, the goal is to get traffic to your website

ok sure. Why not.

> and increase brand awareness […]

Hm. HN isn't Google. Brand awareness isn't always positive. There are several examples here where repeated coverage causes knee jerk negative reactions.

> SEO

Yes, that is a problem. If every time someone posts about grammarly or whatnot, if the Google algorithm doesn't care that people are vomiting with disgust in the comments, and treats that as "engagement", that is a problem.

Then again, you run the risk of having a page full of "omg grammarly is so shit" comments at the top of your Google ranking, so maybe that's appropriately Darwinian in a sense.

(No hate on grammarly, I just couldn't think of something more HN specific right now)

Re: How we hack Hacker News and consistently hit the front page

#125

Post by edgineer »

Paul-Craft wrote: post #108
yuliyp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A comment attacking someone for being a shill is expressing skepticism in the most trivial way, and serves to throw a debate into a flamewar rather than actually discussing the flaws of their arguments.

I wouldn't even say it rises to the level of "expressing skepticism" per se. It's just literal ad hominem. Ad hominem is a logical fallacy precisely because a good argument is a good argument regardless of who is presenting it, and likewise a bad argument is bad on its own merits. There is more that could be said here, but, really, if you take this as your default approach to analysing things you read on the internet…

Us tin foil hatters would say manipulators realize that it is given that they need a good argument; the trick is that there are infinite competing good arguments they just need to get in front of.

Re: How we hack Hacker News and consistently hit the front page

#126

Post by gumballindie »

bumbledraven wrote: post #106
gumballindie wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It will be interesting to see how tactics like this one evolve as ChatGPT use becomes more widespread. I suspect there may already be openai shills around here. While not using chatgpt for spam they may still be promoting it like mad. Notice there are few alternatives shared and open source models are much less frequently mentioned.

That’s because every model sucks for complicated tasks compared to GPT-4, and no one aside from OpenAI has a model more capable that GPT-3.5.

And apple is the only laptop manufacturer and tesla the only electric car. The world out there is full of better options.

Re: How we hack Hacker News and consistently hit the front page

#127

Post by dang »

Kiro wrote: post #25
ouid wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the rule against calling other people shills is the worst part of hackernews. Skepticism is important, and important to share. I have never been anything but grateful to read a comment pointing out that another comment was obviously a shill. Perhaps I have been embarrassed for not seeing the obvious truth, but always grateful.

I would bet 99% of the "obvious shills" are actually not shills at all.

Yes. In fact, probably more than that.

(long sibling comment about this - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35932851)

Re: How we hack Hacker News and consistently hit the front page

#128

Post by archagon »

justaj wrote: post #105
hakanderyal wrote: post #27

I don't see this post as "hacking" the HN, but in the same vein as the famous "Mission ... accomplished" comic from xkcd[0]. I wish more people produced content like the ones they've mentioned (about an interesting, current topic, with their own take). [0]: https://xkcd.com/810/

On the flipside of this argument, it kind of sucks to submit an awesomely made article [0] which details significant research on the intricacies of DAW UI requirements and have almost no discussion on it because other posts may have been gamed and thus received attention instead of the more organically submitted content. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35922858

Sometimes, if an article is good enough, you can message dang to see if he might put it in the second chance pool.

That article does look great — gave it an upvote if it helps.

Re: How we hack Hacker News and consistently hit the front page

#129

Post by naveen99 »

hakanderyal wrote: post #27

I don't see this post as "hacking" the HN, but in the same vein as the famous "Mission ... accomplished" comic from xkcd[0]. I wish more people produced content like the ones they've mentioned (about an interesting, current topic, with their own take). [0]: https://xkcd.com/810/

I wonder when the llm’s will start communicating directly with each other using just embeddings. Our words will seem like dolphin squeaks in comparison.

Re: How we hack Hacker News and consistently hit the front page

#130

Post by ouid »

dang wrote: post #44
ouid wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the rule against calling other people shills is the worst part of hackernews. Skepticism is important, and important to share. I have never been anything but grateful to read a comment pointing out that another comment was obviously a shill. Perhaps I have been embarrassed for not seeing the obvious truth, but always grateful.

There's no such thing as "obviously a shill"—I can tell you from years of experience that the vast majority of such accusations crumble instantly on investigation. Commenters are far too quick to hurl them at other commenters. There seems to be a cognitive bias where one's feeling of good faith decreases as the distance between someone else's opinion and one's own increases [1]. If so, then everyone has a "shill thre…

A shill is anyone who lends credibility to a con (or more modernly, PR) by claiming to believe it themselves. This can be witting or unwitting, but if what you're doing is repeating PR, even if its because you believe it, you're a shill.

In fact, a grifter prefers their shills to be defending them in good faith. The basic currency of a con is confidence. This is easier to wield if you don't have to pretend.

Unfortunately for moderation efforts, the test for whether or not someone is unwittingly repeating PR is not easy to moderate, or, by extension, automate the moderation of. But it is a problem of equal importance to the "bad faith" shills because the effect on the conversation is somewhere between identical and worse.

If theres no way to accuse someone of uncritically repeating the lies of, say, Apple, then you will select for people in your conversations who are unwittingly repeating the lies of Apple.

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