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How we hack Hacker News and consistently hit the front page

(www.indiehackers.com)
414 points muchtest | 1 comments | 13 May 23 16:13 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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nkurz ◴[13 May 23 16:22 UTC] No.35929865[source]▶
Vouched for and upvoted because I think it's important for readers here to see how much effort goes into creating posts that game the system. I think it's better for these strategies to be known than hidden. It will be interesting to see how tactics like this one evolve as ChatGPT use becomes more widespread.

There's a definite tension between the rule of not accusing other users of being shills and the reality that there are quite a few shills out there. I think it a still good rule, but not because it's never right. Rather, the rule is good because the false accusations do more harm than letting some shilling slip by.

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bombcar ◴[13 May 23 16:49 UTC] No.35930145[source]▶
There’s a silent part of that rule: if you suspect a shill, gather the evidence and present it to dang via email.
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dang ◴[13 May 23 20:26 UTC] No.35932358[source]▶
Yes please.

Edit: actually not so silent - it's the latter part of this guideline from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."

It's part of the contract we have with HN users - we ask them not to post this stuff in the threads, but in return we always look into cases that they report to us directly.

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marketingLizard ◴[13 May 23 22:36 UTC] No.35933443[source]▶
How long do shill posts last before they've been taken care of?
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1. dang ◴[14 May 23 01:42 UTC] No.35934559[source]▶
I'm not sure I understand your question. Sometimes they get "taken care of" instantly by software. Sometimes it takes moderators minutes or hours to see them and "take care of" them. Other times we don't see it and an email from a user asks us to look into it, which we do. That can take a bit longer because there's an extra hop in the path.