It's usually not a good idea to explain a joke, and I'm not the GP so I'm not sure that's what they meant, but "plant" has multiple meanings, and I suspect they are referring to meanings 3 to 5 from this list: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/americ... . Basically, you were asking for some kind of elaborate meaning to a random image downloaded by a random app, and they provided an elaborate conspiracy theory to match your question...

Heaven forbid someone make a joke on the internet and not take your frustrations as seriously as you seem to take yourself.

To address your frustration at the analysis stopping there: What do you expect someone who is likely more versed in web dev and their unique distributed systems to do? Do you expect them to have the expertise to decompile an app from a third party, an app popular enough to cause this much traffic? And if they did, would it be worthwhile when their only concern is limiting/lowering that traffic?

> Heaven forbid someone make a joke on the internet

Jokes are funny.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289

> I agree with what people have already said, but I think there's one more point to add: people usually over-estimate how funny their own comments are. We have a tendency to think, "This idea of mine is hilarious! And different! Surely this witticism is the exception." And we are usually wrong. When you have N people all doing that, there's a lot of noise.

> I try to gently point this out to people who complain when their attempt at humor has been downvoted by the community. It's not that we don't like humor. We just don't like banal attempts at humor, which becomes noise. Or, put in a less charitable fashion, "You're not as funny as you think you are."

I'll offer a counterpoint that humour containing a kernel of truth, or simply tickling enough grey matter to be stimulating, especially when coupled to topical opinion or informative substance, however obliquely, or by contrapunctus an uncomfortable notion delivered via a candy-coating of levity, is often appreciated, and although I am not generally concerned with the integer popularity contest it is helpful feedback for training one's temporal lobe, and I will reveal that on this occasion the jest has strong positive reinforcement, most likely due to diffusely enclosing a distorted subtext of real events and the innate conflict of reconciling this to the mock-paranoiac narrative, but perhaps also due to the coupling thereof to the construction of a pun, and further observe that my own stumbling path to exploring which modes of wit might be appreciated on this forum, vs those rejected as noise, has been largely empirical, and years in the walking, and remains an ongoing process for the ages, and although I cannot claim to have discovered a global maxima, but instead have merely blindly grasped the whimsical elephant, I would question whether the existence and forms of comedy could be otherwise derived from first principles or any other means, all of which is to breathlessly recommend: go ahead, crack a joke, see what happens.

> What do you expect someone [...] to do?

I don't expect anyone to do anything. As a person reading this story, I just commented on the fact that it would be interesting to know more details as to how the app ended up making these requests in the first place.

I was just expressing my personal opinion that if I went this far investigating the situation, that's what I'd like to find out as well.

> [...] when their only concern is limiting/lowering that traffic?

If that were their only concern, they could have just (quoting my previous comment):

>> block[ed] the request URL/UA string pair, which was also an option

However:

>> since they already traced the culprit with a lot of effort [...] the logical ultimate step to conclude their investigation should be to see what the code does

Like everything else, this is just my personal opinion of course.

> your frustrations

> your frustration

Not really sure where this comes from but it's really unnecessary.

I'm glad for Wikimedia that they resolved the issue, and shared the details, which make for an interesting read.

I've majored for years in cracking jokes on Hacker News; often a hazardous undertaking given the capricious and judgemental denizens of this forum. And yet comments whose kernel or allusions contain a mode of wit or wry observation have supplied roughly one third of the aggregate approbation tally, for what that's worth (which is, admittedly, very little, but remains nevertheless a useful guide to one's welcome).

What's curious is that many folks claim the subthreads of their comment as a personal fiefdom, taking umbrage at any remark they deem unworthy of the continuation, the self-appointed gatekeepers of repartee.

Specifically, though, I don't think this is a valid complaint:

> there really isn't any need to explain this to me

since it follows from:

> how does anything you wrote relate to anything I wrote?

which is, rhetorical or otherwise, and notwithstanding the pilgarlic territoriality, a clear request for an explanation, which rob74 has elegantly supplied, and to which I'd append only one additional observation, viz. that the image is a plant

Lol, I don't think you got the joke if you needed a paragraph long explanation of why you don't think it's funny.

It's also okay to not get a joke, you can simply move on with your life.