[abstractbeliefs]

This is a weirdly astroturfed post, a full 50% of the top level comments are the author or accounts created moments before this post, specifically to comment here.

I'm still interested in the product, but I've already got a bad taste in my mouth. If it's good, leave it to speak for itself.

[mjdrogalis]

Hey, author here. No foul activity was intended.

I've been building in public on Twitter and LinkedIn over the last few months and pre-announced the launch a few weeks in advance. I think a lot of the comments here were just folks flowing through there.

[az226]

Lol. You’ve been caught red handed and you still double down. Take the L.

[enether]

Why would the author replying to comments be a bad thing? Shouldn’t be counted in the “50% imo”

As for the potential of fake accounts - doesn’t HN have protection against this?

[abstractbeliefs]

I'm talking about the top level comments, that is to say, comments posted directly in reply to the post itself. At the time, of the six comments, 1 was the author, and two were his colleagues who created accounts <5 mins before the post was created.

Isn't it strange that 3 accounts were created moments before the post and then all happened to make their first and only comments on this post, each with strongly positive responses and not disclosing any link to the project?

A further account has been created since then:

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=chucklarrieu

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=botcanics

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bcalderwood

I do understand that HN has voter ring detection which seeks to cluster groups of users who engage strongly in cooperative voting, but the accounts here are probably too new to establish a pattern strong enough to call a voting ring already.

[gerardnico]

They are followers, colleagues, supporters as I am.

Is it against the rule to support a friend?

[abstractbeliefs]

Not at all! It's good to support your colleagues, but it's also considered good etiquette to state your relationship when creating new accounts to give praise like this.

While you're doing do innocently, because of the rewards of doing well on HN, it does happen there people create new accounts to illegitimately try to boost their ranking without saying so.

Being proactive in stating your interests is polite and transparent

[mjdrogalis]

It's all good—I understand the need to protect the legitimacy of what's trending here.

I think in this case, a lot of people who've been following me on other channels just wanted to show some support and weren't familiar with the etiquette here. No harm intended.