alt Hacker NewsHey, 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.
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.
The claim is not "zero bot activity" - how would one even begin to support that?
Rather, the claim is that accusations about other users being bots/shills/etc. overwhelmingly turn out, when investigated, to have zero evidence in favor of them. And I do mean overwhelmingly. That is perhaps the single most consistent phenomenon we've observed on HN, and it has strong implications.
If you want further explanation of how we approach these issues, the links in my GP comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41710142) go into it in depth. If you read those and still have a question that isn't answered there, I can take a crack at it. Since you ask (in your other comment) whether HN has any protections against this kind of thing at all, I think you should look at those past explanations—for example the first paragraph of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398725.