[momokoko]

This very site denies it happens even though it is often quite obvious.

> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email [e-mail] and we'll look at the data.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If you mention this kind of thing at all, dang will pop in and warn you. You can post all kinds of other crazy stuff, but mention astroturfing or vote manipulation and you will almost always get a response. This is because these sites realize the exact opposite. That the percentage of this stuff is absolutely massive and they are terrified what will happen if the public finds out how common it is.

Its not that people do not realize it happens. It is that the average person is underestimating it by serveral orders of magnitude.

[dang]

That's no denial. That guideline specifically asks people to notify us so we can investigate. We do that every time anyone asks. I've personally spent hundreds (probably thousands) of hours investigating such things, have banned many accounts and sites for it, and have put tons of effort into writing code to combat it. We take it seriously. We just need some evidence. Surely you don't think we should lower the bar below that?

If you don't believe me, ask troydavis, who went to all the trouble of investigating the above case and writing the OP, whether we take evidence seriously and ban accounts and sites based on it. Or any of the countless other HN users who spot things and ask us to look into them. They're the ones who actually care enough about the community to help protect it.

The problem is that there's another side of the coin: most of the cheap insinuations of astroturfing, shilling, foreign-agenting, spying, botting, and all the rest of it—where by "most" I mean the vast majority—are pulled (begging your pardon) purely out of the insinuator's ass. Internet users just love to make this stuff up as a cheap way of throwing shade on whatever they dislike. That's the dross the guidelines ask HN users to keep out of the threads. This is important because gratuitously accusing others of dishonesty is a fast track to poisoning community, and it's 1000x easier to generate such accusations than it is to answer them.

> This is because these sites realize the exact opposite. That the percentage of this stuff is absolutely massive and they are terrified what will happen if the public finds out how common it is.

Here is something I can answer definitively—you're talking about what's going on in my mind and I think I can speak with some authority about that. No, that is not what's happening. What's happening is that I worry about the integrity of the community on two sides: protecting it from actual abuse and manipulation on the one hand, and protecting it from toxic fantasy bullshit on the other.

[momokoko]

> I've personally spent hundreds (probably thousands) of hours investigating such things, have banned many accounts and sites for it, and have put tons of effort into writing code to combat it.

> No, that is not what's happening.

Not to try and get clever and twist your words, but these statements do not appear to line up particularly well with one another.

[tbodt]

First statement is absolute numbers. Second statement is regarding relative numbers. They can both be true.

[dang]

Ok, I'll give you a detailed breakdown. You said that three things were happening which in reality are not:

(1) that we "realize the exact opposite [of what we say]" — in reality, I tell the truth as far as I know it, because I respect this community (edit: plus, for the cynical, it would be a stupid and unnecessary risk not to);

(2) that we're "terrified what will happen if the public finds out how common it is" — in reality, I'm confident that the community would be bowled over by how diligently we work on this, and my only woe is that half the commenters don't want to hear it when I tell them how common it is (namely, that it's uncommon relative to the insinuations that they love to fill the threads with, and that such insinuations are the harder problem to solve and a heavier burden on moderators);

(3) that "the percentage of this stuff is absolutely massive" — in reality, unless I'm wildly ignorant of my job, it's tiny relative to the quantity of imaginary things people make up about it. The latter is the greater threat to HN. With real astroturfing and other forms of abuse, it's possible to find evidence and take action. But how do you persuade the internet not to hurl shit-soaked spaghetti everywhere? (Sorry for the unhinged metaphors, but it's demoralizing to argue about this in HN comments, because none of the users making grand insinuations want to hear about that side of the problem, and when I raise it they say things like "dang denies that astroturfing exists".)

We have a rule that you can't manipulate voting, commenting, or submissions on HN (because some people do that and shouldn't). We have another rule that you can't smear others with insinuations of abuse without evidence (because some people do that and shouldn't). There's no contradiction there. That doesn't seem hard to understand.

[momokoko]

> in reality, unless I'm wildly ignorant of my job, it's tiny relative to the quantity of imaginary things people make up about it.

It is a safe bet you would not have written this the way you did if you knew this was a larger problem that you did not reveal or you were an amazing thespian.

Apologies on the insultation, which is obviously unfounded at this point.

[dang]

Appreciated!