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A comment on Google resists demands from states in digital-ad probe. Parent comment

Re:Google resists demands from states in digital-ad probe by dang on Friday February 21, 2020 @02:53PM (#22386161)
It's not about the content of any single post; the point of astroturfing is to make that indistinguishable. It's about patterns of behavior, some of which are publicly visible and some not. When someone is using HN to advance the interests of a particular corporation, that's not good-faith community membership, and it breaks the organizing principle of this site—intellectual curiosity—egregiously.

Re your accounts, I'm not sure what has felt capricious and arbitrary to you, but from my perspective it's simply a matter of following the site guidelines and using HN in the intended spirit. We discussed that at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22173082 (but also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22359424). If there's some aspect of moderation that still isn't transparent to you (or anyone!) I'm happy to do my best to explain, and even happier to correct any mistakes. But it would be better to send those to [email protected].

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Google resists demands from states in digital-ad probe by tylerl on Friday February 21, 2020 @05:11PM (#22387442)
"Astroturfing" is a political concept. It's about making a top-down initiative appear to be a bottom-up one instead. Fake "grassroots". AstroTurf, see?

What you're talking about, as best as I can tell, is called "fanboyism" -- individual devotion characterized by unusually strong vocality and blindness to contradictory evidence.

Fanboys are extremely common in tech, but usually associated with companies that make products with particularly elegant design (Apple, Tesla) or with a strong sociopolitical component to their identity.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Google resists demands from states in digital-ad probe by dang on Friday February 21, 2020 @05:55PM (#22387813)
It's a familiar distinction. You've expressed it particularly well. We don't have the real-world information about users that would be needed to make such calls with certainty (nor would we want it!), but based on what I've seen, I don't believe it's fanboyism in this case.

More importantly, it's a distinction without a difference in cases like this. When someone is using dozens of accounts to post corporate propaganda to HN over many years, they're abusing the site and we ban them.

[ Parent | on HN ]