[inaros]

The author of the great Astrophotography is not the OP of the HN post.

And that is already one starting and possible isolated indicator of astroturfing, ....when the movie related posts got no traction, they went looking for related subjects...

[dahart]

That proves nothing. You are making assumptions. Did you look at the submission history of the poster?

HN runs on user-submitted posts. People submit things they find interesting, and things they believe others will find interesting.

[inaros]

>>People submit things they find interesting, and things they believe others will find interesting.

I can hear the sounds of Kumbaya, My Lord.... this is a more realistic take: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47520761

[inaros]

>> HN runs on user-submitted posts.

Its about the timing.

[dahart]

You are still making assumptions.

[inaros]

That is how every investigation starts....

[austinthetaco]

Under the assumption that amazon has decided to astroturf on this niche tech news site, that is still okay and allowed to do as long as the article provided is interesting. There are countless posts here which are just blogs from various companies, sometimes posted here by the companies themselves. Meta, Apple, small startups, movie companies, whatever. It's all allowed here as long as the content posted has substance and is interesting, thats all. What's important is that the comments are productive and interesting and not being used as a soapbox, which is likely why your parent comment is negatively voted. There are countless platforms for you to suggest others not see a movie, but a hn post about astrophotography is not that.

[inaros]

>> Under the assumption that amazon has decided to astroturf on this niche tech news site

Even Microsoft astroturfs here...

Satya Nadella, Microsoft FY2019 Q1 earnings call [1]:

“In fact, this morning, I was reading a news article in Hacker News, which is a community where we have been working hard to make sure that Azure is growing in popularity and I was pleasantly surprised to see that we have made a lot of progress..."

[1] - https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2018/10/24/mi...

[austinthetaco]

there is a stark difference between a division aimed at developers attempting to astroturf on a tech industry (mostly developer) news aggregator and a movie studio.

[inaros]

Its a whole industry with hundreds of employees and thousands of bots: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47520761

[compiler-guy]

I don't think I have ever submitted my own work to hn, but I'm not astroturfing what I do submit.