[iopuy]

Is there an extreme amount of astro-turfing going on in this thread? I looked at the profiles of 3 of the most fervent supporters of this tool (comments by livin21, shyjal, and g0vz) and the accounts had only 1 other comment among all 3 over the course of years. Is this tool really that amazing that several lurkers have come from the shadows after years of silence to pledge their allegiance? Those were literally the ONLY 3 I looked at as well.

[dang]

The OP seems to have asked early users to vote and comment in the mistaken idea that this would help the post do better on HN, when in fact it's the fast track to getting flagged and penalized. Doing this is against HN's rules, of course. We want people to vote and comment because they ran across something and found it intellectually interesting, not because they or a friend has something to promote.

We have software to detect such violations. In addition, seasoned HN users figure out what's going on and react quite aversely, as you demonstrated. Once such a ring has been identified, if the story is still on the front page, users will flag it (as happened here) or moderators will penalize it. Plus we often ban the accounts and site involved.

This case seems to have been at least in part an honest mistake. More importantly, the tool seems to be of some interest to the community. Because the most important thing on HN is to have interesting things to discuss, I'm going to reduce the penalty on this post and let the discussion continue.

I hope everyone realizes that this is a rare outcome. The more common outcome is that we ban the accounts and sites involved. So please don't do this!

[livin21]

:D I am not active on HN. But was using this tool since its development phase and was in a constant feedback loop with the devs. Classifying some HN noob's positive comment on a tool he used as astroturfing is kinda discouraging :)

[throwmefaraway2]

This sparked my curiosity.

Is this your github https://github.com/Livin21 ? I see this person is from Cochin, India [1]. I then see the facebook page linked to on your website [2] mentions your founder [3] who happens to be from Kochi [4] which is the same city [5].

This is quite odd, no?

[1] https://imgur.com/a/tBCmKGY

[2] https://imgur.com/a/RZgKg9Y

[3] https://imgur.com/a/fbMnrrh

[4] https://imgur.com/a/9sn4LSs

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kochi

[rpeden]

I don't find it necessarily odd that one of the early users is from the same city as the company that created the app.

Sometimes, when I've worked on a small tool I want to share with others, I've found that telling people about it at local meetups is the easiest and quickest way to get people to try it out.

Maybe something similar happening here?

Or they just happen to work in the same building, or same coworking space, etc.

[saleeh]

This is what exactly happened.

[beaconstudios]

"growth hacking"

[saleeh]

Understood your concern. These were our early users and being giving us feedback till now.