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Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News

goorapid.com

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Re: Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News

#51

Post by noobermin »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #36

Site 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.

The thing is downvoting isn't that visible on HN due to scored being hidden, just post hiding, which feels useful for bad posts which get it and deserve it (spam, useless comments, and the like)

Re: Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News

#55

Post by zitterbewegung »

neilv wrote: post #46

YC could offer this as a paid service. For $100 million, you can boost a post with fake upvotes. (Hey, it could be the big break that turns into a $1B startup. And the cost to provide this service is high, since YC thrives on reputation, which this erodes.) Now that it has a price tag, sue others for theft of service.

They do this in an an opposite way . Launch HN and Job postings for startups are the reason why this website exists at all . But now the website is large enough that people will pay to promote things on it. This has replaced my usage of Reddit even before the drama.

Re: Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News

#56

Post by Topfi »

For me, this loops back to the age-old question "Is there honor among thieves?".

Or, to put it in another way, whose to say that they deliver at all?

The site appears barely functional, their own social media accounts have laughably small follower/subscriber numbers considering what they claim to offer and unless I am mistaken, there appears to be an active effort, beyond the often cited meassure that ensures voting on directly linked posts does not affect the vote count[0], to keep everything honest.

[0] https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/blob/m...

Re: Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News

#57

Post by em-bee »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #36

Site 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.

i use one of those filters that only show me stories that have at least 50 points. i only read those interesting to me, so i don't know if any stories with fake upvotes make it through, but without that filter i'd be overwhelmed.

i suppose number of comments would work as an alternative measure, but that doesn't work for stories that are interesting but don't generate much discussion. and it potentially would just push people to post fake comments instead, creating more moderation work.

Re: Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News

#59

Post by zarathustreal »

Quick reminder: upvotes are not a proxy for quality.

People vote based on how they feel about a product not on the merit of the product itself. In my experience, votes are about 90% subjective, 10% objective. You will not find someone upvoting something they dislike just because they believe it's objectively true, likewise you will not find someone downvoting something they like just because they believe it's objectively false. Votes have very little to do with the thing being voted on and very much to do with the way the voter feels when voting. It's much easier to act on instinct than logic. There is a nontrivial number of people in this world that never realize the difference between their perception of reality and reality itself.

The most popular things are often the simplest or easiest to digest, not necessarily the best for the given purpose. Popularity is not a proxy for quality.

Re: Site claims to sell upvotes on Hacker News

#60

Post by sokoloff »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #36

Site 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.

I’m struggling to see how HN without voting would be anything other than a simple timeline of posts with comments.

If you compare the level of “interestingness” of the front page and the first page of new, it’s night and day for me. I still go to new sometimes, but when I do, I feel like I’m doing community service to try to surface the most interesting items for the community.

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