HN Explorer

Hacker News is being hacked by marketing trolls

4 points by benkarst ↗ HN
I've been browsing this site on average, a couple of times a day for 5 or 6 years. Suffice to say, it's not what it used to be. I have absolutely no hard data no back this up but my intuition tells me there are a many users in the tech space that are here for marketing purposes.

For example, I've noticed at least 3 times a multi-million/multi-billion dollar sass companies releasing new features or new pricing getting 400+ upvotes. Then most of the comments gushing about how great the product is.

Most comments I see is shallow and opinionated as opposed to rational/technical discussion that made Hacker News what it was.

It's possible that it's just my perception has changed not Hacker News. So I have to ask: Has anyone else noticed this or am I going cuckoo?

5 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 25.1 ms ] thread
slater
Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, 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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

atlasunshrugged
I'd say it depends what you mean by hacked - I don't disagree that many companies see HN as another marketing channel and are trying to do the same thing here as they would on most other channels, but I do think that HN still has a bigger proportion of non-marketing/sales people who aren't just running astroturf campaigns than other places
benkarst
True, I guess as any news forum grows, you're going to have marketing trolls. I'm just kinda disappointed that it never gets down-voted or called out in the comments.

Maybe if more users had the right to down-vote, there wouldn't be this problem.

uniqueid
One thing I do notice is occasional spam in "new," but, to my delight, it always winds up flagged before an hour has passed. This is usually the case even with border-line posts (eg: an acceptable title like "I just found an amazing text-editor" but a link to a lousy, crap-app text-editor). I don't have too many complaints; HN moderation is better than any other site I know.
[dead] HNShillCorn
You're just schizophrenic or bored by the lockdowns. Please head to Reddit. It's totally unsubstantial. Your claims I mean.