[KirinDave]

What's happening is it's getting a lot cheaper to buy votes on Hacker News. People have offered to do it for me to get the O(n) search papers I resubmit every quarter to the front page. Folks assure me "it's way cheaper than it used to be!"

[gweinberg]

Why would anyone do that? In particular, why would anyone pay to get an article on HN that has been there before?

[KirinDave]

Why does anyone pay money to promote anything when often you can simply deal directly with the aggregator: the illusion of authenticity and relevance.