Thread

1. anon_cow1111 · 1789859036 · focus · HN ↗

   Personally the first HN algorithm anecdote I really noticed was when the "stop destroying videogames' petition hit the front page a couple years ago. In the first hour it got a modest ~100 votes and comments with some organic discussion, so pretty typical for a good HN post. In the next hour it was dead and buried several hundred posts down.

   I don't want to be a tinfoil hatter here, but I think certain industries have a lot more influence over this site than most people realize.

   1. Capricorn2481 · 1789859436 · focus · HN ↗

      This isn't very satisfying to me, as that ranks pretty low on the list of potentially damaging threads, don't you think? The genesis period of a petition? I see way more alarming stuff on here every day that further disillusions me to the biggest players.

      I don't like Paul Graham, but I don't know if he really gives a shit what's happening on here. HN is not a super influential forum.

      1. anon_cow1111 · 1789860082 · focus · HN ↗

         >as that ranks pretty low on the list of potentially damaging threads, don't you think?

         Yes, exactly. That's why it struck me as being so weird; something so innocuous on its face getting hammered that badly suggests some kind of outside coordinated influence.

         (oh, and edit; apparently industry lobbyists had been holding private counter-op meetings with the EU Commission before said petition was even finished, so there's that. Not immediately relevant to this discussion but it does speak to what goes on behind the curtain in government topics)

         1. Capricorn2481 · 1789862667 · focus · HN ↗

            > That's why it struck me as being so weird; something so innocuous on its face getting hammered that badly suggests some kind of outside coordinated influence.

            That seems like circular logic? Hasn't dang offered many reasons why a post might be suddenly down rated?

            There's just got to be more than "I think I saw a post get down rated, so it must be a bot army"

            1. anon_cow1111 · 1789864852 · focus · HN ↗

               I don't know all of what dang has said personally, but in most cases where I see new topics getting killed it's pretty obvious what the reasoning is; political ragebait, shady sources, plain junk articles or other low-quality threads.

               The SDV/SKG petition thing was none of those, and people were generally positive about it during the discussion. So it seems to me it was either an unexplained random down-voting event or something a little more malicious.

      2. user_7832 · 1789861982 · focus · HN ↗

         The thing is, it doesn't even have to be PG/HN doing this. Case in point, look at reddit being astroturfed by every company.

         And also, look how good Graphene OS posts do, and now compare that to Stop Killing Games. These both have a similar overlap (unless you work at Google, both are interests/hobbies), yet GOS almost always hits front page (and rightly so), yet SKG failed to, despite being a Stallman-ian topic.

         1. Capricorn2481 · 1789862592 · focus · HN ↗

            Well I definitely think the site is heavily botted, as it's trivially easy to do so. I was speaking more to moderation.

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.