Unsurprising. Now this explains how the Rust posts were getting upvoted to the top so quickly. Case closed.
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Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News
31–40 of 117 posts
Re: Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News
#32This would be great if it was itself a scam - some world-worsening grifter plunks down $40-75, the site says "thanks!" then does nothing.
HN itself should open up a competitor and do that.
Re: Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News
#33Is 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.
It says you get a certain number of comments also. I was thinking maybe post something innocuous that wouldn't normally get many votes and comments, pay to have the post promoted and track the accounts that comment.
Re: Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News
#34So all the HN team have to do is to spend the money a few times and see which users always upvote the 'boosted' posts?
Re: Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News
#35Very cool article! Very interesting. Much recommended. A+.
Re: Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News
#36Site admins should "buy upvotes" a few times, at different hours of the day, and aggressively ban every account that's a repeat offender.
But, really, upvotes are always easily exploitable and often lead to a sort of herd mentality among commenters. This is why Reddit is the definition of "echo chamber." HN is much better, but it would still be improved if upvotes and downvotes were done away with entirely.
Re: Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News
#37No thanks. I would much rather people downvote me when they disagree. If all I get is upvotes then what purpose would it serve to be here? That would imply we all think alike which would be silly and dangerous.
Some people would pay good money to make a number on a forum go up.
They shuold try and contact the admins lmao it's just an int in a db at the end of the day
Re: Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News
#38I paid for the upvotes but this is all I got.
Re: Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News
#39Rule of thumb: If it's cross-posted on ProductHunt the same day it's most likely spam.
Re: Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News
#40If your service has any form of gamification, not matter how primitive - you can buy "cheats" for it.