HN has now been around a while, is really popular, and is starting to catch the attention of ad/marketing companies now, though - how do you know what here is genuine?

Even the heuristic of "only trust accounts older than n years" isn't perfect, as eventually a few people will undoubtedly sell their old accounts on a dark web market for a little extra cash...

And it's not just the spammers. Any topic that touches domestic or international politics in any way almost instantly brings out a lot of bad-faith actors, here or anywhere else on the internet.

> Even the heuristic of "only trust accounts older than n years" isn't perfect, as eventually a few people will undoubtedly sell their old accounts on a dark web market for a little extra cash...

Yikes, I hadn't thought of that angle. That would explain some of the long-dormant accounts on Some Other Place that suddenly start spewing out-of-character garbage, assuming they weren't password-guessed, data-breached, or keylogged by some rando.

Hmm, I think for now it's relatively easily distinguishable. I've noticed that HN'ers feel "like me". So I look for that specific signal. I look for signals that care about curiosity and an insane hunger for the truth. Also, it's tough to mimic "Oh yea, I was at Xerox Parc programming this language that was posted about, let me give some nuanced insights into what was stated in the article" (that quote was made up for the sake of example).

The only marketeer that would be able to consistently fool me might be a marketeer that was a developer. But last time I applied for a junior marketeer position I was asked: given your resume, don't you want to be a developer instead? So devs seem to get pidgeonholed into always being devs.