How Hacker News ranking works: scoring, controversy, and penalties (2013)
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Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.
How Hacker News ranking works: scoring, controversy, and penalties (2013)
Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.
at1as · · focus · HN ↗
It's clearly easy to mobilize armies of users (or, these days, agents) to upvote submissions or warm up an account. I receive emails all the time offering this kind of service across virtually every website I have any presence.
But without explicitly published rules, it's harder to figure out what works through trial and error, especially if account history plays a role. Agents will clearly optimize around the rules, so I it's probably more important than ever that they're vague. X "open sourced" its algorithm (sort of...), and the bot problem there is as bad as its ever been.
potamic · · focus · HN ↗