In my experience, that's not true. Rather, people are much too quick to jump to the conclusion that so-and-so is a bot (or a troll, a shill, a foreign agent, etc.), when the other's views are outside the range of what feels normal to them.
I've written a lot of about this dynamic because it's so fundamental. Here are some of the longer posts (mini essays really):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39158911 (Jan 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35932851 (May 2023)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398725 (June 2021)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 (May 2020)
Since HN has many users with different backgrounds from all over the world, it has a lot of user pairs (A, B) where A's views don't seem normal to B and vice versa. This is why we have the following rule, which has held up well over the years:
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email [email protected] and we'll look at the data." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Hey, I would appreciate if you could address some of my questions here[1].
I do think it's unrealistic to believe that there is absolutely zero bot activity, so at least some of those accusations might be true.
In my research and experience, it is. I’m making no comment about bots/shills on this site, either, I’m responding to the plausibility of the original comment.