As a native English speaker I agree with the comment parent. "Please x" is just passive-aggressive. You see it a lot on hacker news because people want to be "civil" without actually being so.
Please tell me (pun intended) how the hell you're supposed to be civil if being civil leads to you being accused of pretending to be civil for ultelior motives? This is stupid.
It's not civil to say "Please stop spamming." That's like saying "Please stop beating your wife." It contains an accusation, which is never a civil thing to say. There is no civil way to bring up how your conversational partner is beating their wife or spamming OkCupid.
Adding a "Please" is pretending to be civil.
There are just some conversations that cannot be had "civilly". If you think this is stupid ....I can't really help you. Try to go have a civil conversation about someone's weight gain with them.
> There are just some conversations that cannot be had "civilly"
I think here lies our disagreement. I do believe that you can talk about anything in a civil manner. Being polite is completely orthogonal to the topic discussed. In this case, "please stop spamming" is just a more polite way of saying "stop spamming", period. The difference is in tone, not context, and this is how the word "please" is supposed to be used. Also, what goodside said was not "please stop spamming", but "please tell your employees to stop creating fake profiles (...) and spamming our users". Which is a request, not an order.
Accusations have nothing to do with civility. Telling me "please stop beating your wife" when I'm beating my wife is valid, just like saying "please stop spamming" is valid here because they're spamming. If you believe goodside is dishonest about Dating Ring's employees spamming OKCupid, address that.