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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

#51

Post by gumballindie »

nkurz wrote: post #3

Vouched for and upvoted because I think it's important for readers here to see how much effort goes into creating posts that game the system. I think it's better for these strategies to be known than hidden. It will be interesting to see how tactics like this one evolve as ChatGPT use becomes more widespread. There's a definite tension between the rule of not accusing other users of being shills and the reality that…

> 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.

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

#55

Post by burnished »

marketingLizard wrote: post #48
dang wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes please. Edit: actually not so silent - it's the latter part of this guideline from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html : " Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. " It's part of the contract we have with…

How long do shill posts last before they've been taken care of?

Just out of curiosity, what sort of answer are you expecting? Your post reads as vaguely accusatory to me - like you're implying that messes are being left intentionally

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

#56

Post by burnished »

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).

Tailscale is a perfect example, I only know they exist because their engineering blog gets shared (and I quite like their break downs)

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

#57

Post by roenxi »

jsnell wrote: post #14
nkurz wrote: post #3

Vouched for and upvoted because I think it's important for readers here to see how much effort goes into creating posts that game the system. I think it's better for these strategies to be known than hidden. It will be interesting to see how tactics like this one evolve as ChatGPT use becomes more widespread. There's a definite tension between the rule of not accusing other users of being shills and the reality that…

Right, I'd say that this post has more value than any of the repetitive content marketing these folks churned out for a few years, since it hopefully makes some HN readers a bit more aware that they're being played. But the interesting question is: why did they write this article? Is it just that the jig is up, and their one weird trick no longer works as well as it did? Did they get asked to cut it out by the HN mod…

> ...since it hopefully makes some HN readers a bit more aware that they're being played.

How are they being played? There isn't any deception here. The plan Iron Brands touts is literally "submit interesting articles first". That is what people are trying to upvote.

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

#58

Post by svnt »

burnished wrote: post #55
marketingLizard wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long do shill posts last before they've been taken care of?

Just out of curiosity, what sort of answer are you expecting? Your post reads as vaguely accusatory to me - like you're implying that messes are being left intentionally

Accounting for their username they are either making a joke or trying to assess the potential performance of the strategy even if they get flagged.

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

#59

Post by hamallama »

burnished wrote: post #55
marketingLizard wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long do shill posts last before they've been taken care of?

Just out of curiosity, what sort of answer are you expecting? Your post reads as vaguely accusatory to me - like you're implying that messes are being left intentionally

Shills don't care about their accounts, just that they spray their message around. Just curious if the silent system works fast enough.

For my curiosity, by the way, my account was rate limited. Thanks Dang.

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

#60

Post by linkdd »

everybodyknows wrote: post #12

> You can post multiple times: HN understands that quality posts can go unnoticed, ... Yes, anecdata: A number of my own highest-quality finds have sink with barely a ripple on the "new" page. > ... so you can try the same post again. Don’t overdo it. I would say max 2 or 3 times. Most legit posters have better uses for their remaining lifetime minutes of brain activity than to game HN in such a tedious exercise. Var…

> ... so you can try the same post again. Don’t overdo it. I would say max 2 or 3 times.

I don't even understand how that's possible. Every time I tried to post a link that was already posted (by me or someone else), it redirected me to the original post (and upvoted it if I wasn't the author).

After observing that behavior 2 or 3 times, I assumed HN had some kind of deduplication system.

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