alt Hacker NewsThe 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.
Alright, thanks. I read your explanations and they do answer some of my questions.
I'm still surprised that the percentage of this activity here is so low, below 0.1%, as you say. Given that the modern internet is flooded by bots—over 60% in the case of ProductHunt as estimated by the article, and a third of global internet traffic[1]—how do you a) know that you're detecting all of them accurately (given that it seems like a manual process that takes a lot of effort), and b) explain that it's so low here compared to most other places?
[1]: https://investors.fastly.com/news/news-details/2024/New-Fast...