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.
That runs into a different problem, which is that lists tend to make for lame discussion. Since it isn't clear which specific item to discuss, the topic ends up being the lowest common denominator, which in this case would be Amazon or AWS in general. We don't need another thread about that.
Nobody on HN would benefit from the sprawling thread about AWS ARM instances (a huge big deal announcement) crossing over with the sprawling thread about AWS satellite ingestion (less a big deal, but interesting in exactly the sense this site is geared towards).
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.
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=mcrute