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Botnets Auto-Downvoting on HN?

10 points by stadia42 ↗ HN
Here's a screenshot where someone made a (completely uncontroversial) comment, and within 1 minute was downvoted to "dead". Looking at their history, all of their comments since yesterday have been downvoted to dead, most (but not all) of them equally uncontroversial.

https://ibb.co/sCHB7th

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26312652

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bopbeepboop

I cannot find any other explanation besides a botnet that targets specific users for instant downvoting when they post a new comment. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I thought it would be good to bring this up to the attention of the community.

Edit: just confirmed that this wasn't a fluke, a response by that user to the thread he's involved in is again showing as dead, at 0 minutes: https://ibb.co/P6KghWr.

18 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 54.5 ms ] thread
stadia42
25 minutes later, the comment no longer shows as "dead", it's just a normal comment. Maybe people upvoted it? But how? I thought dead comments have no upvote button?

Or maybe there are no botnets, and I simply don't understand the mechanics of "dead" in HN. Like maybe some users get automatic "dead" status to their comments due to past violations? (That would be a bit strange though.)

Nextgrid
You can enable a "showdead" option which would show dead comments and allow you to upvote them.
stadia42
Thanks! That at least explains how the comment became undead.
detaro
> Like maybe some users get automatic "dead" status to their comments due to past violations?

That what happens: HN doesn't fully ban people, but instead just hides their comments by default. (e.g. what happens if you see dang comment "we've banned this user")

stadia42
So this automatic hiding by HN are indistinguishable to the regular users from the "dead" comments caused by downvoting? And the regular users can revive such automatically "hidden" comments in exactly the same way as they can revive comments downvoted to death?

About "we've banned this user": do you mean some comments will be replaced by this message, but others (future?) comments will be automatically assigned dead status but still visible?

Jtsummers
The way it seems to work:

(I'm going to keep this simple by sticking to racist/bigoted posts, as those seem to be the ones this happens to the most)

X posts something bigoted. Whatever it is, it gets downvoted and flagged and ends up dead. These will turn into hidden posts that are tagged [dead]. If X repeats this behavior or is otherwise a bad actor (within the context of the HN guidelines) they may end up shadowbanned. Shadowbanned users' comments start off [dead] by default, even their valid ones. It's up to others (like me, with showdead on) to vouch for these better comments.

Some users may take it too far. The comments aren't just bigoted, but outright espousing something most of us reject (a user I saw this happen to recently posted a comment basically calling for mass killing of an entire ethnic group). Users that take things too far like that, or who are otherwise abusing the HN system, end up [banned]. Their comments cannot be revived, though you can still see them if you turn on showdead.

Now, that's an extreme. I'm not sure all the reasons someone could end up [banned], but the primary one is repeatedly ignoring the HN guidelines and abusive behavior towards other posters. dang seems to be good, as well, of warning people if their behavior is outside the bounds.

stadia42
Great! I'm glad no evil botnets are involved :) And thanks for the explanation!
mattmanser
On top of what jtsummerssaid, users with enough karma can 'vouch' for dead comments and get them revived. I've no idea what the threshold is, but I can vouch for those comments if I wanted, you've got to click through to the direct comment page to do it (click the time of the comment, it's a link).

I suspect another user has done exactly that for the comment that was suddenly visible, someone vouched for it.

On the other hand, I wouldn't say that users comments are great, bit conspiracy sounding, insults another user, I wouldn't vouch for him.

stadia42
That makes sense. I guess shadow banning may also expire over time?
ezekg
You can click the timestamp of a dead comment and vouch for it. You may also have to enable showdead, not sure.
LinuxBender
Did you email dang and ask? Both of the moderators have been very open and responsive to questions when I have emailed them.

  hn@ycombinator.com
stadia42
Yes, dang is super nice, he responded to my message and confirmed that everything is working as intended!
aaron695
New accounts can start shadowbaned (algorithms), this account is 1 day old.

Then people can vouch on dead comments.

bjourne
Up and downvoting on HN works in mysterious ways. I don't think there are botnets voting. If there are, they are spending their time upvoting content. My theory is that HN has an "anger management" feature. That is, if a user is posting comments that others down vote, the system assumes that the user is "angry" and automatically penalizes their subsequent comments. Feel free to down vote and flag this comment so that I can test my theory.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
floatingatoll
The site admins have posted before asking that anyone who thinks they see botting or other malicious behaviors to please email them using the Contact link in the footer.

If you haven’t done so and you’d like your concern to be reviewed by the site admins, I encourage you to do so; they haven’t replied here by now, which means they won’t see this unless you do email them.

stadia42
Thank you! I did contact dang, and everything is fine :) No evil botnets are involved!