[rvnx]

It depends on the platform. Most of the platforms reward content engagement, no matter if the content is positive or negative.

Engagement means money. Even if this is bait content then you get rewarded (on TikTok, X, YouTube, you directly get cash).

Even here controversy is indirectly rewarded here because it creates engagement, and there is practically no downsides if you upset anyone;

You get points for every answer that someone does to your comment, and the downvotes you get on your own comments don't offset the gained points.

These points have real utility to make money indirectly: the more points you have, the more credibility you have on this platform and capacity to push a story.

[...]

and it helps to bootstrap your project or grab new customers for free (at most 1 day of writing the bot script).

Let's say, you want to launch a new Juicero, and nobody knows about it yet, it's great to be able to push it on the homepage of HN, otherwise nobody is going to notice.

[lurk2]

> These points have utility: the more points you have, the more credibility you have on this platform and capacity to push a story.

<1: Troll

<10: Throwaway

<60: Troll

<300: Probably a throwaway. Quality varies widely.

>500, <1000: Normal people

>1000, account less than 6 months old: Redditor, all content will be political or occasionally about Linux, most comments will be inflammatory.

<1000, >10,000, account less than 5 years old: Mostly normal users. Quality isn’t generally great.

<10,000, >30,000, account 10+ years old: Usually the best quality posts; karma and age suggest consistent contributions overtime without any of the personality disorders that go with being terminally online.

>100,000, account <5 years old: Redditor, all content will be political or occasionally about Linux, most comments will be inflammatory. Lots of flagged submissions about US politics.

>100,000, 10+ years old: Domain knowledge expert. Usually an older user with enough of a reputation that a subset of users know the user’s real identity. Will occasionally post absolutely unhinged comments.

[lostlogin]

This is hilarious, particularly the last sentence.

The absolute key feature is the domain experts, not the karma. Any time any subject comes up, someone appears that knows everything about the subject and lives in the field. It’s the single best thing about HN by a million miles.

[chasd00]

The domain experts present here is pretty amazing i have to agree. I love when you get a comment that's like "oh, you have that wrong it's X instead of Y. I invented this technology 30 years ago, here's the reasoning behind X..."

[epolanski]

You can have millions of upvotes just with jokes.

I remember a guy that had millions just because on any reddit AMA asked "tits or ass?"

[RiverCrochet]

You can also have hundreds of thousands of downvotes if you work for EA and are completely tone deaf.

https://fandomwire.com/karma-slapped-ea-with-the-most-downvo... (there are probably better articles about it out there, I quit reddit a long time ago)

[mjr00]

The commentor was talking about HN karma, not reddit.

You're right about reddit karma though. One of the good things about HN is that throwaway joke posts like that are downvoted/flagged/otherwise discouraged. I can guess the top comment for any given Reddit comment section with like 90% accuracy just because it's going to be the most obvious joke possible based on the submission title, and Reddit users love upvoting those for some reason.

[JKCalhoun]

I believe the only threshold that might warrant karma-farming on HN is 100 points? Is that when you can actually downvote? After that karma was certainly not on my radar.

I'm trying to establish, if you'll believe me, that I'm not whoring.

And yet, I confess to generally towing the cynical line in my comments. But that's my nature. "Atta boy", piling on, bandwagoning—antithetical to my nature. In fact I'm always suspicious when a thing appears to have no downside.

I can say too at times, I'll take a stand in opposition to what I actually believe in order to call myself out—or, you know, cast doubt. I suspect ego comes in to play too—it's kind of a challenge to take the unpopular opinion and champion it.

In short, I think if I generally agree with the sentiment in the thread, I don't comment.

[rvnx]

I like to defend the devil here as well, because I see it as an interesting challenge / puzzle. It is very intellectually motivating and difficult to find compelling arguments that can move someone's opinion. Like verbal judo.

[JKCalhoun]

We might be called contrarians.

I'm okay with that.

[jonathanstrange]

I think it's 500 points, or at least it used to be.

[totallynotrvnx]

Just checked, 1 point can upvote but not downvote

At the end, just saying that the best way to increase engagement is to increase bait / rage. Ironically that increases retention on the platforms too, so they don't need peace, if there are juicy flame wars.

[CDRdude]

It probably still is. I have a bit below 500 points and I can’t downvote.

[JKCalhoun]

(I just helped push you closer to the mark.)

[latexr]

> and there is practically no downsides if you upset anyone

Seems like the downsides are about the same as in other forums. It depends on if your account is anonymous or not.

> You get points for every answer that someone does to your comment, and the downvotes you get on your own comments don't offset the gained points.

I don’t think that’s right. You don’t get points for replies, you get points for upvotes. And downvotes you get also affect your overall karma, though you don’t seemingly have an upper bound on upvotes but I have read there is a lower bound of -4. An upvote on a submission seems to also be worth less than an upvote on a comment, though I’m not sure of the ratio (half? one third?).

> These points have real utility to make money indirectly: the more points you have, the more credibility you have on this platform and capacity to push a story.

I don’t think that’s right either. Once you can downvote and flag (500 karma?), more points don’t give you anything extra. Personally I rarely check someone’s points, only when viewing comment history or trying to identify spammers and other obvious bad actors.

> This is why I am collecting points on all my fake accounts, because once I have collected enough karma points, I can upvote my startup speech on Hackernews using these shadow accounts.

HN has voting ring detection. Though I can’t speak for how effective it is.

[immibis]

I don't think YC startups need to sneak to promote their startups - they can just ask the moderators to give them a boost.

Meanwhile if you say anything bad about capitalism the comment is removed.

[nosianu]

> Meanwhile if you say anything bad about capitalism the comment is removed.

If that is an example for how your usual comments look like, I can assure you it has nothing to do with whether you criticize capitalism or not. A low-effort single-sentence mood statement is just not a good fit for the site.

[JKCalhoun]

I've seen plenty of anti-Capitalism comments on HN. To be sure, not the popular opinion.

[mschuster91]

One thing I've noticed over the decades here: anti-capitalism used to get you flagged to death in the past... but since Covid and especially since the Russian invasion and associated price shocks / cost-of-living crisis, it takes a lot to even get downvoted.

The HN culture used to be almost exclusively a ton of nerds thinking that tech and the free market would be the answer for everything - but the last few years have served as a brutal, but very effective reality check for a lot of people.

[mjr00]

> The HN culture used to be almost exclusively a ton of nerds thinking that tech and the free market would be the answer for everything - but the last few years have served as a brutal, but very effective reality check for a lot of people.

IMO it's more the HN userbase has expanded, a lot, and now includes a lot of people who aren't the same tech enthusiasts the site had historically. Yeah, I know, eternal September and all that, but to put it into perspective: Trump's first election victory got 2215 comments[0], his second election victory got 9275 comments[1]. There are some mitigating factors here--iirc HN was having downtime issues due to the traffic in 2016--but HN was already pretty popular among tech enthusiasts 9 years ago, and it's grown 400% from that!

I'm sure some people have changed their minds, but any shifts (perceived or real) in politics on HN are more likely due to changes in the userbase over time, IMO.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12907201

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42057647

[mschuster91]

> I'm sure some people have changed their minds, but any shifts (perceived or real) in politics on HN are more likely due to changes in the userbase over time, IMO.

"Eternal September" explains (correctly IMHO) why there are more people of a different background, but more people doesn't explain why it is very noticeable that downvotes and deathflags don't happen as frequently as before.

[lostlogin]

> last few years have served as a brutal, but very effective reality check for a lot of people.

Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be much of a good side to it all. Work from home maybe?

It’s back a ton of progress on many fronts. Counter examples welcomed.

[rvnx]

I am genuinely none sure.

I would tend to think that this goes naturally:

you get boosted by a circle of people you know, and who wants you to succeed, because if you succeed they will get money), so there is the incentive in some way.

but it's still plausible that getting a boost on HN is part of the package (but I am not sure it is needed, because of this natural push that you get from let's say 100 people around you).

What you said about capitalism is true, I noticed it too, and it sounds even strange to me, as we are literally on a board that is initiated by a capitalist fund.

[zzzeek]

"you're posting too fast; please slow down"