HN Explorer

Ask HN: Is Google infiltrating HN?

8 points by lewisj489 ↗ HN
I have seen a bunch of articles to do with Google products created with accounts just a few hours/days old.

e.g The dozens upon dozens of Flutter articles

I have also seen lots of slandering of Google's competitors and praise of Google (Even if they weren't directly referenced previously) in comments. Also created by accounts fresh accounts.

Do you think they could be doing PR on HN? Or am I just noticing it because I think they might be doing it?

9 comments

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mettamage
Confirmation bias is a well-studied bias [1].

With that said, there are people who try to game HN for whatever reason. Maybe FAANG is doing it? Why just Google?

This question reminds me of a game of Maffia or Werewolf, the following is a bit of a stretch but: if you play that game a lot you might have some intuition about it. At least it might be a new fun game you could try!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

otras
Interestingly there was a Ask HN about Amazon using HN for advertising its product recently as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18553815. It was around the time of reinvent, which makes sense, but it also made some people suspicious.

Disclaimer: I work at Google but do not post on behalf of my company.

Edit: Removed facetious comment about potentially enjoying being on HN as part of my job.

partisan
Wouldn’t that type of job make you really cynical about every other comment you read online? If your posts are hidden ads then what about the others?

There is a difference between an advertisement that is labeled as one and a disingenuous post on a site like this one where that type of activity is nonexistent.

While you might derive some short-term pleasure from the challenge of infiltrating people’s trust boundaries, it can’t be something to be proud of.

otras
My apologies, I was trying to include a facetious comment about enjoying spending time here as part of my job, not that I would enjoy being an anonymous shill. That wasn't clear, and I've updated the GP to reflect that.

I greatly enjoy and value the discussion here. Being a part of the community in an open and clear role would be compelling, and I absolutely agree that subterfuge hurts the community.

detaro
If you have examples of suspect submissions or accounts, e-mail the mods and ask them to take a look.
dang
If you (or anyone) see something on HN that excites suspicion of abuse, let us know at hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate.

We occasionally see accounts that appear to be doing corporate propaganda, and we ban those. Unfortunately, it's much more common for users to perceive other users as astroturfers or shills when they're simply expressing an opposing viewpoint. These are two different problems that need to be dealt with separately. That's why the site guidelines ask users not to accuse each other of astroturfing in the threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

If you're interested in the underlying bias that causes people to assume that someone else couldn't possibly be holding an opposing view in good faith and therefore must be a shill, I think it's related to the Hostile Media Effect. That is the finding that people with strong views tend to experience the platform as being biased against their side: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22hostile%20media%22&sort=byD...