alt Hacker News> 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.
> If you can herd a bunch of karma via botting, you can then [maybe] use that karma to influence all sorts of things.
How? Karma on HN is not like Karma elsewhere. The idea of [maybe] monetizing HN Karma reads like the old southpark underpants gnome meme[0].
[0]https://imgflip.com/memetemplate/49245705/Underpants-Gnomes