I assumed that brigading had increased. This is mostly due to seeing things go from unflagged to flagged in the amount of time it took me to read the article. I've been a many-times-a-day reader for about 12 years now, and I hadn't really encountered that until recently. But, after reading about MOTs, those seem like a playable reason too
Internet users generally are too quick to reach for sinister/nefarious explanations of phenomena that have mundane/boring reasons, so I lean more towards that interpretation, but I really don't know.
I would think HN to be a much smaller/niche community than say reddit or twitter in terms of users/monetisation etc, so there’s likely more efforts to manipulate content there. I have myself seen that on niche subreddits for example where bot activity is very obvious - like a 1 hour old post with more upvotes than the top post of that month. To a lesser extent it’s also visible in probably a hundred different ways on reddit (out of which I know a few, and the r/bothunters sub likely knows many more). Thanks for being a human moderator in the middle of all this!
That you haven't seen much evidence of a change is actually really nice to hear and a bit surprising. Since HN has grown in popularity in recent years, I would have expected collusion to show up as a noticeable change in behavior. The motivation and potential reward for brigading seems like it would increase with HN's influence on the tech community.
Also, thanks for responding and providing your insights!
It's odd how the most-discussed topic can feel like the least-discussed, but if you think about it it kind of makes sense. I call it the "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded" theory of HN threads: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
There's another variant of this phenomenon: I've been spending most of my time posting dozens of in-depth explanations of this over the same time period, and yet somehow these explanations don't make it through to many users. I assume you haven't run into any of those, since you probably wouldn't have asked your (perfectly legitimate!) question if you had. Here are a couple to get you started, if you (or anyone) want to understand what's been going on here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43130700
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011
If you (or anyone) will take a look at those, and then still have a question that isn't answered there, let me know and I'll be happy to take a crack at it.
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It is no longer safe to move our governments and societies to US clouds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43150085 - Feb 2025 (761 comments)
Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43139172 - Feb 2025 (289 comments)
DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43138238 - Feb 2025 (1436 comments)
SpaceX engineers brought on at FAA after probationary employees were fired - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43127819 - Feb 2025 (133 comments)
Every .gov Domain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43125829 - Feb 2025 (265 comments)
Treasury agrees to block DOGE's access to personal taxpayer data at IRS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43121306 - Feb 2025 (170 comments)
DOGE puts $1 spending limit on government employee credit cards - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43120231 - Feb 2025 (690 comments)
DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43112084 - Feb 2025 (1664 comments)
Doge Claimed It Saved $8B in One Contract. It Was $8M - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43101757 - Feb 2025 (125 comments)
A SpaceX team is being brought in to overhaul FAA's air traffic control system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43101009 - Feb 2025 (146 comments)
"Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43098705 - Feb 2025 (1278 comments)
USDA fired officials working on bird flu, now trying to rehire them - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43097709 - Feb 2025 (179 comments)
US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43066182 - Feb 2025 (788 comments)
Are DOGE's Claims of Social Security Payments to 150-Year-Olds Way Off Base? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43056993 - Feb 2025 (108 comments)
Anyone can push updates to the doge.gov website - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43045835 - Feb 2025 (1123 comments)
USAID funding freeze disrupts global tuberculosis control efforts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43038727 - Feb 2025 (119 comments)
DOGE Has Started Gutting a Key US Technology Agency - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43037426 - Feb 2025 (179 comments)
DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43036042 - Feb 2025 (285 comments)
DOGE as a National Cyberattack - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43035977 - Feb 2025 (211 comments)
NOAA's public weather data powers the local forecasts on your phone and TV - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43018643 - Feb 2025 (113 comments)
Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42981756 - Feb 2025 (1801 comments)
Announcing the data.gov archive - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42970039 - Feb 2025 (132 comments)
Elon Musk's Demolition Crew - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42968430 - Feb 2025 (345 comments)
DOGE staffer resigns over racist posts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42966412 - Feb 2025 (105 comments)
DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42951458 - Feb 2025 (381 comments)
20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42950790 - Feb 2025 (548 comments)
What's happening inside the NIH and NSF - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42940257 - Feb 2025 (1535 comments)
Onlookers freak out as 25-year-old set loose on Treasury computer system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42936421 - Feb 2025 (133 comments)
Payments crisis of 2025: Not “read only” access anymore - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42933219 - Feb 2025 (654 comments)
Words flagged in search of current NSF awards - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42932760 - Feb 2025 (155 comments)
The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42910910 - Feb 2025 (2990 comments)
CDC: Unpublished manuscripts mentioning certain topics must be pulled or revised - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42905937 - Feb 2025 (721 comments)
CDC data are disappearing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42897696 - Feb 2025 (589 comments)
Musk aides lock government workers out of computer systems at US agency - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42892278 - Jan 2025 (125 comments)
NSF starts vetting all grants to comply with executive orders - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42886661 - Jan 2025 (488 comments)
Archivists work to save disappearing data.gov datasets - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42881367 - Jan 2025 (238 comments)
US pauses all federal aid and grants - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42851248 - Jan 2025 (485 comments)
'Never seen anything like this' – NIH meetings and travel halted abruptly - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42817910 - Jan 2025 (111 comments)
NIH hit with freezes on meetings, travel, communications, and hiring - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42798960 - Jan 2025 (440 comments)