alt Hacker NewsThe operative word there is "primarily". Simon comments on a variety of topics and has far more interactions that don't link to his blog than do.
Simon's posts are not engagement farming by any definition of the term. He posts good content frequently which is then upvoted by the Hacker News community, which should be the ideal for a Hacker News contributor.
Except that the "content" that reaches the top is always about AI / LLMs and nothing else and it is "all the time". Any opportunity to comment, he will link back to his own blog.
He even reposted the same link (which is about AI) with one of his posts when the upvotes fell off and until the second one reached the top, with the intention of promoting his own blog.
Let me simply prove my point to you on how predictable this spam is.
He will do a blog post this month about this paper [0] with an expert analysis by either someone else (or even an LLM) with the primary intention of the blog being used for self promotion with at least one link back to his own blog.
> ...which is then upvoted by the Hacker News community
You don't know that. But what we do know is that even the moderators now have "favourites". Anyone else would be shot down for promotional spam.
[0] https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.24880