by itunpredictable on 6/30/23, 1:56 PM with 111 comments
by version_five on 6/30/23, 2:08 PM
It would be fun to use chatgpt to make some throwaway SaaS mvp and then get these guys to promote it to see what the experience is like (and then write it up for HN).
by A_D_E_P_T on 6/30/23, 2:16 PM
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.
by tough on 6/30/23, 2:12 PM
by tptacek on 6/30/23, 2:18 PM
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
If this worked reliably at these prices, it would be trivial to burn the accounts behind it: you'd just buy upvotes (cheaply, it turns out!) for a marginal story and watch who votes for it. It's most probably a scam, feeding on people who themselves hope to scam the site.
by skilled on 6/30/23, 2:06 PM
As for /new - it's pretty hard to get by that gate if you're making a blatant attempt of trying to get on the front page. And I think a lot of HN users would easily recall a time they flagged something on /new because it's clearly spam even if it doesn't look like it at first glance.
Now, the irony here would be if this is actually a gamed submission itself and the provider is showing that they can get your story on the front page regardless.
by bearjaws on 6/30/23, 2:02 PM
Any sufficiently large site will have to deal with bad actors and bots, HN is no different. HN has not been a small site for 3-4 years now.
by QuadrupleA on 6/30/23, 2:13 PM
by Zaskoda on 6/30/23, 2:33 PM
I think my social media story might be pretty common. Early on, all my social graphs across various platforms were well managed mappings of my real life friends. Today, all my social graphs are a mess. Platforms seem to push to make it easier to discover and find new friends. I want the opposite of this.
I want to have to go through a series of steps in real life in order to add someone to my contact list. I want to classify this friend in some way that acknowledges what the level of trust is. Is this person a casual acquaintance or a trusted family member?
When content is "shared" and I'm receiving it in my news feed, I don't just want to see how many "likes" it has. I want to heuristics on how my personal network responded to that piece of content. And, of course, I want to own that data and I want my hardware to crunch the data. So this could be built in a decentralized way.
This paradigm is far less susceptible to Sybil attacks, such as paid upvotes on a sites like Hacker News. It would isolate us, in a way, from the zeitgeist. But it would connect us more closely with our real world social network.
by Topfi on 6/30/23, 2:26 PM
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...
by LanceH on 6/30/23, 2:42 PM
I pay one upvote per article worth seeing more of. And one upvote for good comments.
by mercurialsolo on 6/30/23, 2:10 PM
Being asked to defend your work in public and why it's worth being upvoted or talked about is something that folks building should have to go through.
by zarathustreal on 6/30/23, 2:29 PM
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.
by mlhpdx on 6/30/23, 2:17 PM
by at_a_remove on 6/30/23, 3:18 PM
Also, there's a certain set of topics where I can watch the tally go, very predictably -- up, then it gets smashed, and then finally there's some Johnny Come Latelies who vote up again.
Personally, agreement is easy and congruent ("This is correct"); disagreement is quite different ("This is incorrect, and here's why ..."). I think you ought to be able to "agree" with an upvote, but disagreement? That's when words are more useful. Downvotes are too easily brigaded and provide nothing in the way of discussion.
by itunpredictable on 6/30/23, 2:21 PM
by ttrn on 6/30/23, 2:32 PM
Plus, if you're trying to build a genuine community around your product or idea, you need their honest feedback and support to truly understand what they want and how to improve. So, I'd say that buying upvotes is not a sustainable strategy and could actually harm your chances of success on the road to PMF.
by miki123211 on 6/30/23, 2:22 PM
If you're too harsh on content heavily promoted by voting rings and content with lots of low-quality comments, posting tons of low-quality comments and making a bad attempt at a voting ring becomes an useful strategy against your competition.
by seydor on 6/30/23, 2:19 PM
by jack_riminton on 6/30/23, 2:15 PM
by neilv on 6/30/23, 2:22 PM
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.
by throwaway104782 on 6/30/23, 2:18 PM
by stefs on 6/30/23, 2:04 PM
by denton-scratch on 6/30/23, 3:10 PM
Hmm. It's not obvious they've actually visited.
by fbdab103 on 6/30/23, 2:25 PM
by b800h on 6/30/23, 2:54 PM
by A4ET8a8uTh0 on 6/30/23, 2:30 PM
by marban on 6/30/23, 2:17 PM
by bad_alloc on 6/30/23, 2:10 PM
by pierat on 6/30/23, 2:40 PM
Why am I not surprised?
by LinuxBender on 6/30/23, 2:01 PM
by vxxzy on 6/30/23, 2:04 PM
by blanketcitrus on 6/30/23, 2:09 PM
by electrotype on 6/30/23, 2:16 PM
by coding123 on 6/30/23, 2:03 PM
by peter_retief on 6/30/23, 2:20 PM
by CyberDildonics on 6/30/23, 2:27 PM
by drumhead on 6/30/23, 2:36 PM
by rvz on 6/30/23, 2:11 PM
Case closed.