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Ask HN: What is this HN spam bot doing?

17 points by vqc ↗ HN
I just noticed a user, https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=vipbababd, that seems to be taking a random comment in a submission and reposting that comment in the same submission.

The user profile contains a link to a stream to an upcoming boxing match. Is this an SEO play? Would this even work for SEO? Or hoping to farm some karma and then sell the account?

10 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 33.0 ms ] thread
bifrost
I doubt it'll work. Looks like there were some legit responses, and then a bunch of spam.

My guess would be someone testing something.

dang
We noticed that a few minutes ago and banned the account and moved the replies back to their rightful parents.

If you guys notice more duplicate comments appearing in threads, will you please let us know? This was a pain to fix manually, so the sooner the better.

geoka9
> will you please let us know?

What's the best way to do that?

mtmail
The contact link in the footer of the website (hn@ycombinator.com)
minimaxir
Huh, even on Reddit this kind of strategy would be trivially detectable.
Matsta
This is an example of Parasite SEO. You get a site with high Authority site that you can put some content on (HN/Reddit/Medium/Steemit/GetJar). Then you send a lot (100k+) spammy backlinks and then rank for some difficult terms.

Google doesn't penalise big sites for spammy backlinks compared to a fresh domain, and also with the high authority, it will rank a lot quicker.

A good way to find example of Parasites is to search "Fortnite hack". I can see links from LinkedIn, Steam Workshop and a PDF hosted on a hacked (presumably) website for a roofing company.

dang
Can you explain this again in more detail? Not being versed in SEO ways, I want to understand it but don't.
kuu
The more links your website has from some other websites, the more popular your site is. If these links come from "an authority" (an already popular site, like HN, Reddit, Wikipedia or other main website like that), the more popular your site is.

By "popular" I mean more relevant for Google.

gitgud
That's fascinating, the lengths that people will go to to get their site ranked is amazing.

What about backlink providers, there's thousands of companies that try to increase your ranking by backlinking for you, does Google penalize those companies?

asdkhadsj
Fascinating. I despise a lot of the scummy behavior on the internet, yet I am so often amazed by the ingenuity and perverse incentives that get exposed by people that develop these.

I admire them, in a very weird and mostly despised way.