Once you get enough karma (I can’t remember what the number is) you’ll be able to see dead submissions. If you look at new you’ll see that there are spam posts coming in every couple of minutes or so. They’re just very effectively detected, as you suspected.

It's not a karma gate, it's gated behind the showdead setting in your profile, which everyone has access to.

Ah — I stand corrected.

The karma-gated part is being able to vouch dead comments

I hope the links are getting set to nofollow so there really isn’t any value anymore for the spammer checked: They are nofollow links

There's definitely a bit of influence / perception manipulation on HN. A few years back I heard a story that a tech company would monitor HN for certain keywords, and if their product or category was ever brought up or mentioned multiple developers would always show up to engage on the topic. This isn't quite spamming or cheating the system, but it's a very effective tactic for shifting public perception.

You might be referring to GitLab: https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/developer-rel...

(hi to those from GitLab watching #hn-mentions on Slack)

:waves:

It's a curious division between "old internet" and "new internet" (those on the *chans may have parallel but slightly different terminology for this dichotomy) to see people use BBS-style vs IRC-style emotive expressions.

> You might be referring to GitLab: https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/developer-rel...

That's really interesting that they'd disclose their strategy so publicly. On the one hand, I can't see it doing much harm. On the other hand, wouldn't it be somewhat self-defeating or even embarrassing to confess that you're doing that? One could probably reasonably assume that many companies have a social media strategy like that, but to have people know that's the strategy would probably drain away at least some of the goodwill provided by the posts.

I would think it is good if done in a good way and bad if done in a bad way.

bad way - posting stuff to make your company profile go up all the time, if you think you have something that might be of interest to HN sure but not everything you do should get posted. when negative stuff comes up swoop in to defend company and to drag down those saying negative things about company, especially without disclosure but even with disclosure.

Good - something technical about company comes up, developers who worked on technical thing come in and clarify technical aspects for people. Somebody has problem with your product and you come in and ask for clarification and help solve problem.

Doesn't GitLab make all of their internal documentation public?

This is how some companies counter negative glassdoor reviews. Bury them with 10x positive reviews.

HR at my last place was very aggressive in reminding us to leave 5-star reviews at Glassdoor. They once even offered Starbucks gift cards to the first 5 of the month. I was very sure to leave an honest, dirty laundry review after I left including a mention of this practice

Wouldn't what they were doing be against the ToS of places like Glassdoor?

Probably, but does anyone think Glassdoor is going to chase after potential revenue streams for violating their ToS?

OTOH that’s kinda the utopian version of open source - a public forum where you can engage with stakeholders on demand, as long as others find your critique/question interesting enough to upvote.

God I love hacker news… their insanely outdated moderation tools are a shame, but I can’t lie, holding a big stick makes for a peaceful forum.

Pinecone txtai …

Someone should build an AI agent that keeps a list.

You could also just hire people who spend all their time on this site.

That's already what everyone here does, mostly, it's just off the books.

I'm open to such offers.

Don't all FAANGs and fancy startups already do this ?

It gets its fair share of spam but the platform is very effective at moderation. Show dead and scroll new for examples.

I wonder if nofollow actually does anything nowadays. I feel like the rules that used to be enforced have been replaced with hacky 'AI' that have been hacked together by thousands of SWEs trying to improve some metric for their promotion packet.

the "google way" would be to use instead of "nofollow" "ugc" which stands for user generated content.[1] In the same document they state "We'll generally treat them as we did with nofollow before and not consider them for ranking purposes". However they lied often about their ranking signals ;) https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/09/evolving-n...

Did Google really say that? It makes sense to treat it as a different category of link. An organic back link from a blog or website is putting the weight of the website’s name/reputation behind it whilst UGC has users putting their name/reputation on it (as it relates to their relationship with the originating website). The latter is not worthless as the website ultimately allows it, it not as strong as a signal as an organic backlink.

I’m not comfortable with any endorsement being inferred toward any link that is UGC, even from something the website tacitly “allows” by not deleting it. For the majority of websites there’s plenty of absolute trash lurking in all the Les travelled parts where nobody cares or nobody has seen it. But the bots will always see it.

You dont recognize the spam because the bad ones are removed. Good marketing targets its audience, and influences people who are not associated to repeat its talking points.

That would also eliminate any positive effect that HN has on Google search results.

Theres alot more undervocer product pumping than you would think

People are starting to copy/paste from ChatGPT / equivalent. It's not spam, but it just says nothing and dilutes the conversation.