Hype. HN is _the_ platform to create hype among the early adopter, super-spreader/tech exec kind of people and because of that has an absolutely massive indirect reach.

Just look how often PR reps appear here to reply to accusations - they wouldn't bother at all if this was just some random platform like reddit.

To promote political views and startups and scams, and other things that benefit the bot operators.

This is a small but highly influential forum and absolutely is gamed. Game theory dictates it will be.

Social media accounts with high engagement, and a long life, have monetary value. This is true of most social media platforms.

HN generally does a good job of minimizing the value of accounts, thus discouraging these kinds of games, but I imagine it still happens.

In theory you could Show HN and have your bots upvote it... that would indeed be good marketing.

Karma is a number that can go up. Numbers going up is a supernormal stimulus for humans.

If you turn on show dead, you'll see that some accounts just post spam or weird BS that ends up instantly dead. I think Evon LaTrail is gone now, but for years posted one or more links to his/her/their YouTube videos about personal sanitation and abortion per day.

There is a stream of clueless folks, but there are also hardcore psychos like LaTrail. The Svelte magazine spammer fits in this category.

> What actual value do you believe there is, other than curiosity, that is driving people to build the HN spam bots you think you're seeing?

Testing.

And as siblings say, karma is more valuable than you might think. If you can herd a bunch of karma via botting, you can then [maybe] use that karma to influence all sorts of things.