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How we hack Hacker News and consistently hit the front page

(www.indiehackers.com)
414 points muchtest | 2 comments | 13 May 23 16:13 UTC | HN request time: 0.441s | 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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ouid ◴[13 May 23 20:41 UTC] No.35932488[source]▶
the rule against calling other people shills is the worst part of hackernews. Skepticism is important, and important to share. I have never been anything but grateful to read a comment pointing out that another comment was obviously a shill. Perhaps I have been embarrassed for not seeing the obvious truth, but always grateful.
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yuliyp ◴[13 May 23 21:09 UTC] No.35932747[source]▶
A comment attacking someone for being a shill is expressing skepticism in the most trivial way, and serves to throw a debate into a flamewar rather than actually discussing the flaws of their arguments.
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1. Paul-Craft ◴[14 May 23 07:36 UTC] No.35936126[source]▶
I wouldn't even say it rises to the level of "expressing skepticism" per se. It's just literal ad hominem. Ad hominem is a logical fallacy precisely because a good argument is a good argument regardless of who is presenting it, and likewise a bad argument is bad on its own merits.

There is more that could be said here, but, really, if you take this as your default approach to analysing things you read on the internet, you'll be headed in a good direction the vast majority of the time. It's not a completely black and white thing; for instance one certainly should hold out a healthy level of skepticism if, say, the message and the speaker seem to be completely incongruous, but mostly, let ideas stand on their own.

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2. edgineer ◴[14 May 23 16:30 UTC] No.35939159[source]▶
Us tin foil hatters would say manipulators realize that it is given that they need a good argument; the trick is that there are infinite competing good arguments they just need to get in front of.