Yea, I currently count 10 articles about Amazon on the front page, with 8 of them being posted by the same user [1], who happens to be an Amazon employee. The keynote is happening, but it still seems excessive.
I've also noticed that a few other Amazon employees are popping up in the threads promoting AWS products, which seems a little shady as well.
Does it make a difference if the person who is doing the posting of all of those articles is an Amazon employee? Seems like a clear case of attempted astroturfing at worst, and definitely a conflict of interest at best.
I know there's not really a "solution" to it, and Amazon should definitely be allowed to announce their products on HN, but I think the readers have a right to know that the people promoting these products do benefit from said products being adopted.
I doubt that it makes a big difference. Someone's going to post these no matter what, and it's the upvotes that put them on the front page.
For me the issue is, of the dozen+ announcements, which are actually the interesting ones? I have no idea, but we're not going to leave a dozen of them on the front page to find out.
Does HN have the ability to merge threads? I hate to suggest more work for you, but it seems like a good situation for a "megathread" type of situation for all AWS reinvent-related announcements to all be grouped into. It doesn't really matter, but it could help avoid the clutter, both from the posts themselves, and from the comments decrying them.
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