I posted a personal project on reddit around a year ago that got highly upvoted and someone made a similar post with a bunch of "strange" comments that must be evidence of me astroturfing. I have to admit they were strange accounts, some who haven't commented in over a year, but I wasn't using any alt accounts or anything sketchy. Sometimes people just don't comment unless it's something they really like or are knowledgeable about, or maybe something else, I am not sure and couldn't explain it when it happened to me.

I'm not a frequent contributor to HN (except when I build a product and want to show it on HN). I genuinely commented because I like the book and saw this thread on HN.

I never talked to the author, I only follow him on Twitter.

Thanks. I'm glad to know it's not what it appeared at first glance. And apologies if I drew any unwanted attention to your account.

Aside: Is HN so fragile that it requires end-users to police anomalous activity? Given the age and influence of the platform I'd assume dang and co. who moderate and maintain the board are old hands at staying on top of manipulation of the platform.

Could any mods comment on this? _Should_ we be keeping an eye out and calling out odd activity? It'd be nice to avoid posts like __blockcipher__'s; while well intentioned I could see such commentary having a chilling effect on discourse.

Not sure if you saw it but another user pointed out that there's already a section in the guidelines about it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29542871

> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email [email protected] and we'll look at the data.

That guideline makes sense to me. I was previously unaware of it [the guideline] but the justification is sound, doubly so because it turned out the comments were genuine* :) My apologies.

* Albeit at least one user presumably found the post via Twitter from following the author which is a little bit of a grey area

I was unaware of it as well, thanks for calling it out. I don't think you were wrong to call out your suspicions, I was just unaware of what controls or processes were in place (if any) to prevent the need for users to police stuff.

I don't think it's fragile, but astroturfing is a serious problem for any popular platform. I actually appreciate the time that end-users take to check for inappropriate behaviour.

I bought the book but I haven’t managed to go through it yet. What I can tell is that some real work went into the book. I don’t intend to deploy things myself as I use Heroku and Cloud 66 but sometimes one still has to understand how things work.

I suppose if the author asked a few folks to leave positive comments on the post thats not too crazy. I'd do the same thing if I was trying to promote something. I think I'd draw the line at something more programmatic, like some gray hat creating sock puppet accounts.

The HN guidelines[1] say:

> Don't solicit upvotes, comments, or submissions. Users should vote and comment when they run across something they personally find interesting—not for promotion.

I believe that means that asking people to leave positive comments on a post is something the guidelines ask you not to do.

But I would agree that, for instance, just posting on your social media "I posted this on HN, check out the comments" by itself should probably be fine, and might result in the same behavior, it's kind of a fuzzy line.

Please don't actually ask people to leave positive comments though. Or post something that you hope people read-between-the-lines the same way.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The same guidelines that you linked also say:

> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email [email protected] and we'll look at the data.

true!

Hi, I haven't asked anybody. But I did wait with SHOW HN until I sold something and had good reviews and feedback.

They should disclose that, though. Otherwise the feedback is indistinguishable from astroturfing.

Pretty much everything about this guy rubs me the wrong way. The usual cheesy testimonials / vague promises of content which never really gets previewed, the obvious astroturfing, which he continues to respond to as if they're organic genuine comments, etc. Just leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.

I am really sorry you feel that way. It's all pure feedback from people I don't know. All organic. And I am replying, because I promised I will be around for discussion.

Testimonials, podcasts appearances, and comments here were not solicited. People just did that on their own.

Jeremy from Software Engineering Radio actually really bought the alpha version, and his invitation to the podcast was out of the blue. Jason didn't buy my book (I think) but wanted to talk about it. Juan sent me his testimonial himself. And I wasn't their friend beforehand either.

> never really gets previewed

I linked two previews, one is a full chapter. I also have like 8 readable screens of good quality on the book page.

Thanks for the explanation. Sorry for the false alarm. My spidey senses started tingling but I should have held back a bit.

As you mentioned, I was flat-out wrong about the previews. Not sure if I scrolled straight past that section or what.

Wishing you the best with your book. And FWIW I like the bash-based approach; I agree with the philosophy of peeling away the abstraction layers.

No problem, I know where you are coming from. I regularly get spammed with "we are not PH" and "we are on HN" posts from people I don't even know, and the hard truth is that for lot of these "marketers" it actually works in the end.

Thank you!

Thanks for your straightforward reply.

The comments could have been seen as odd, but your openness suggests it was just a coincidence.

Also, congrats on writing a full book!

Thank you!

On the other side, I find your comment, and all the other comments that originated from yours, very distracting to the point that I didn't care anymore about the book itself but only about writing this (annoying and distracting) comment.

This is why I never look at the comments on ProductHunt.

Show HN has a major problem with that these days. The comments that are just like "perfect timing! I have never seen a resource for this and I'm just learning it now" are really facile, no one actually interacts with people selling you things like this, and it's contrasted starkly with the one comment giving feedback on the page which is that it has no content at all unless you buy it.

I find it very hard to believe the ratio of happy purchasers already seeing value vs. questioners about what this really is being 5:1 or more. Sad to see.

> no one actually interacts with people selling you things like this

There's a whole successful social network (Goodreads) built on people's desire to talk about books, frequently in the form of effusive praise. I think being able to trace the product to a single individual (e.g. a book's author) helps make it particularly appealing to leave that sort of feedback: we know it feels great to hear that someone values a thing you've created, and we like the idea of giving that pleasure to the creators of things we like.

> frequently in the form of effusive praise

I somehow doubt it's in the form of 5:1 ratio of effusive praise to questioning/criticism outside of the true top books there, and then to see this on a random ad where the OP swears he's not contacted anyone about the Show HN and yet all his "happy" "lurking" "customers" pop up with really sweet words within an hour is comical

I understand people are nice sometimes, but it's clearly not organic here.

> it's clearly not organic here.

And yet it's 100% organic here. I was few times on the HN frontpage with my blog (that links my book) so I was hoping some of my readers actually hang out here. I postponed Show HN a few months to get a few hundreds customers first. But that's it.

You don't have to believe me, but it's the truth.

I’d be far likelier to believe you if it wasn’t so obvious and you didn’t protest so much.

If someone is calling me a cheater and a liar, I will at least say they are wrong.

I had the impression Goodreads was a link-farming book/warez site. Is it something real or apparent competing-with-the-Jones', Chef de Claque toxic positivity, whether human or bot?

I and many people I’ve met irl through book clubs etc use it; I find reading my friends’ reviews interesting and I’ve gotten good recommendations through it.

If you’re just looking at the top reviews for a book it’s more questionable; they tend toward the extremes: enraptured encomiums about how beautiful and important and bold the book is, or insult-laden rants where the book is a whipping post for the reviewer to show off what a biting sense of humor they have.

I specifically waited with SHOW HN until I had some customers and good feedback hoping some of them hang out on HN as well.

I swear nothing was solicited. I just posted it myself and waited. No Twitter, no mailing lists, nada.