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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 42.6 ms ] thread
This story is blatantly being artificially pushed to the top of HN.

https://ibb.co/4Ns8DWk

(comment deleted)
I think newer/more recent posts can hit the front page with fewer upvotes as a way for potentially interesting topics to get out of “new”. I wonder if it could also be a function of how many users are currently on the site? So late on a Saturday night perhaps it only requires a handful of upvotes for a new post to hit the front page while a post in the middle of the day during the week would need more.

Either way, this definitely isn’t the first time I’ve seen something on the front page with only a few votes so I’m certain it’s nothing nefarious.

Don't mods boost certain links they think are interesting?
I like how the top comment is flagged+dead. It points out an obvious, but inconvenient truth: enough to get widespread approval and enough to get burnt at stake for that. It's like saying the earth is round in medieval ages.
No, it says that a someone or a few people tried to attack and flag a post to death, and all their comments from others were also downvoted. Nothing says that this got "widespread approval". The top comment could be +0 -12 and it just means all the others are worse. Only an admin can know if any comment got upvotes.

From watching this thread out of curiosity of why it was attacked so viciously, I saw every post go immediately down, no positive time.

All this successfully did was attract a bunch of anti-vaxers, people pushing it, and a few stragglers who saw it before it was flagged.

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"Blatantly being artificially pushed" is an odd way to describe 100% normal behavior. I never stop being surprised at how people put whatever they label they like on whatever they imagine they're seeing, without even the slightest check.

Would you please read the site guidelines and stick to them? You broke them egregiously here.

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

How did this get to #4 on the homepage with only 6 upvotes at the time? That seems almost impossible without manipulation.
Do you ask the same questions when the same thing happens with pro-Ivermectin articles?
I'm not talking about the content of the article at all. I'm just talking meta about how that seems impossible. #4 position with 6 upvotes seems impossible, but maybe I'm wrong and somehow it's was just the most disproportionate upvote-rank ratio I've seen yet.
For those downvoting, it's not the article. Can one not question the meta aspects about an article's ranking for clarification? I did not mean to imply any foul play.
I suspect HN has weights for popular words, e.g. "YouTube" gives +5, "anti-vax" gives -15 and so on.
It's currently 14 votes and 31 minutes old (and fallen to spot 5). So 6 and call it what, 15±5? Neither is at all unusual. Being quickly voted on is worth more (in terms of the ranking) than the same handful of votes over hours or days.
It's not unusual, HN's front page ranking algorithm is heavily biased towards new submissions.
Makes sense. It's just that #4 position with 6 upvotes is the most extreme ratio I've seen yet. When I said that it seemed impossible without manipulation (on a post now flagged), I did not mean that manipulation was happening, just that this seemed unusual.
You didn’t mean it was happening, but saying that it’s “almost impossible” that it isn’t happening doesn’t come across as moderate as you might have intended.
Exactly.

That's why I said that it seems almost impossible... but that's not very clear or moderate over text, my bad.

How new are you? It's extremely unusual. Check the numbers in my other post.
How new are you? I’ve seen this a bunch. The weird ones just fall into oblivion quickly.
Dang has a post about front page dynamics…somewhere on here.
I've looked at the data; it was perfectly normal. This kind of thing happens all the time. It just stands out more when the topic is eye-catching or indignation-inducing.
> The story was genuine
> The story was genuine, but didn't include anything about vaccine deaths. But in this context it would give the false impression that the death rate statistics had come from the leak.
Why this needs to be about anti-vax, as a company it is common to hire influencers to bad-mouth your competitors, could it a be campaign from a vaccine manufacturer?
Agreed, sounded like a tactic to make AZ look better in comparison. Maybe someone bought their stock on the cheap.
Even if the story is fake, it tells how the sausage is made: 2k usd and a twitter "influencer" with 1.5M subscribers will push almost any bs you want.
I don't think you can call this anti-vax when when the ask was to favor one vaccine over another.
It can still be, specially if the favored one is less available. Having people become picky is one plausible method to slow immunization.

It also propagates the notion that vaccines in general are more dangerous than they really are.

Ok, but the headline makes it seem like it definitely was, when there's clearly room for interpretation.
Russian embassy says it's not Kremlin who pushes misinformation. Oh really? Putin wants to destroy EU. He bombed Syria for the refugees to overwhelm Europe. He wants to stop Ukraine of joining EU. And his goal is to make as much damage as possible in Europe. He's waging a war. And misinformation is his weapon.
Absolutely. There's nothing new or surprising about these reports… or about extensive attempts to flag and obscure the reports. If Putin has a bot army on HN, they're on high alert. This is just the territory these days. This is the internet as it exists and intersects real world politics.
Let’s not forget about the ‘Vaccine Confidence’ project which is doing the opposite, paying influencers to say vaccines are safe and there are no risks

The honest answer is vaccines are not risk-free, but also probably not as dangerous as some people think.

Off your link: "It would appear as though Resident Joe Biden and his team of treasonous usurpers may be responsible for at least one of the campaigns, and this through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)."

Saying "there is a public health campaign to increase vaccinations" does not make the risk real. Please link to sources that actually show that instead of something that calls people "treasonous usurpers" and links to InfoWars.

EDIT: removed
Seems like a good sign it wasn't a good source or story. In other words, we should not try to remember it...
Here's one plan, they were paid $400 to $1,000 a month.

CDPHE Vaccine Campaign Communications Plan (Colorado)

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21014896-cdphe-vacci...

"For video testimonials, a video template will be provided and influencers will be walked through the process of recording themselves using the template."

"Lastly, the training session will provide further guidance about how to manage potential dissenters. This will ensure influencers are prepared for COVID-19 vaccine naysayer comments. Each month influencers will receive a link to an updated Social Press Kit, which will have all pre-approved messages and social media content with their respective graphics and images."

"While initial guidance is provided, influencers are encouraged to relay messages with their authentic voice. Monitoring will focus on safeguarding consistency with campaign messaging, while not flagging content for a small degree of deviation."

> death rate among people who had the Pfizer vaccine was almost three times that of the AstraZeneca jab.

Why not someone shorting Pfizer, rather than Russia?

It's very amature-ish, Russia would know it would get exposed, but did it anyway? Russia is good at this.

Also why France and Germany? English speaking influencers will flow to Europe, but not so much the other way.

So for those normal HN viewers still looking at this flagged post, isn't this Russian troll army wild?
Please read the site guidelines and stick to them. You broke them egregiously here.

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

Site guidelines imply a modicum of good faith.

I am used to some political actors exploiting demands for good faith as a cloak. I am not saying you are a political actor, but I am saying you are using a known set of techniques real aggressively and it fits my mental model for a type of bad actor.

Yes, in fact the HN guidelines explicitly ask you to assume good faith. If you don't want to follow the guidelines, that's fine, but then please don't post here.
I have every intention of following the guidelines. It doesn't exempt me from being aware of reality, and there are times when the guidelines and events in reality clash. This makes your job as a moderator (I take it that's something you do?) unreasonably difficult.

I'm very sorry about that. The fact that reality makes it unreasonably difficult doesn't mean reality stops happening, and your efforts are appreciated even when they can't be completely effective (because some participants will not honor your rules or operate in good faith).

It's tough all over, and it's important to respect our intentions. The goal is to get back to good faith one day :)

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