[dang]

We sure are. You can do some too, simply by looking at the account histories of the commenters you feel might be astroturfing.

Overwhelmingly the true hypothesis is the null one: people just disagree. The assumption that no one could possibly hold opinion X in good faith, so therefore they must be shilling, is imaginary. Such accusations in the threads are toxic, so we don't allow it unless there's some indication of more than imagination at work. This has been HN policy for years now and I've posted a ton about it: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...