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. suzzer99 · 1789870098 · focus · HN ↗

      I had a post about Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing that I was hoping would go viral because that's the only way I ever saw Amazon ever fix anyone's KDP issues. I posted, then went to bed. When I woke up, it had 250+ points, but was on page 5 with a bunch of posts that were much older and/or had single-digit points.

      It must have been on page 1 for a while to rack up that many points, then it sank almost immediately to page 5 where all the other posts with even 50+ points were days old. I've always wondered what happened there. Was it the algorithm, or did a mod step in?

      1. scamaltman2 · 1789873446 · focus · HN ↗

         Mods are heavily involved in HN rankings and automation is a tie breaker. There's no way that happened by automation.

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.