https://twitter.com/william_fitz/status/1270740531081932801?...

Googlers downvoted and flagged a comment that raised the possibility of astroturfing. Looks like we hit a nerve. Their employer is spending millions trying to sway public opinion.

Even if another user works for Google and is commenting about Google, a lot of people comment based on what they know or how they feel from work. Nothing could be more natural than to do that, so it's not evidence of an organized campaign. Moreover, it's not something we'd want to suppress on Hacker News, because we don't want to disincentivize [1] people from showing up here to talk about what they know, and for most of us, what we work on is our area of greatest knowledge.

Should an employee of $CO disclose that they work for $CO whenever they comment on a topic that's related to $CO? Arguably that would be courteous to other users. But not doing it is certainly less discourteous than accusing someone else of being an astroturfer or shill, and the implication that someone was paid to post an HN comment rather than expressing a sincerely held view is a slur.

There is plenty of past explanation about HN's no-astroturfing-accusations rule at [2].

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Remember that to argue that the comment contained an "accusation" requires that one draw some inference from the inclusion of the Wikipedia URL. Inlcuding the URL was a mistake. The statement I made however contained no accusation. It merely drew attention to the fact that Googlers often disclose their employer when talking about Google stuff on HN but in this case the person made not mention of it. I found that noteworthy. The inference to be made there would simply be potential bias. I think that's fair.

Is it within the rules to state that a commenter is an employee of "${CO}"? I note the commenter who did that did not get flagged.

> Is it within the rules to state that a commenter is an employee of "${CO}"? I note the commenter who did that did not get flagged.

That's a tough one to answer unequivocally. Bringing in someone's personal details as ammunition in an argument is generally not allowed: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so..., so if I had to pick yes or no I'd say no. But one can imagine lots of borderline cases.