I upvoted it before I'd read all the way through.

I thought the guy was complaining that he had to jump through Google's hoops to get his product in front of his users.

Now that I know he's complaining that Google are making it harder for him to game the system, I'd retract and reverse my upvote if I could.

What others have said about commenters/lurkers and not being able to downvote, but also I think the "sentiment" is more that SEO sucks than that this piece is garbage per se. I upvoted it because it's entertaining and it did, along with the discussion here, broaden my perspective on SEO.

I find the perspective of the SEO guy interesting, even if I find what he does kind of skeezy and annoying.

The honesty is a bit refreshing, I agree. I'd love to read a good, anonymous confessional of the daily life of a SEO that's more intimate and less of their usual humblebrag PR.

I think you'll find only a very tiny fraction of HNers bother to comment, so it's not a representative view of people's opinions on a given article.

We can't downvote posts.

But we can flag them.

Yes, but why would we?

Right, I'd only do so if it was an outright scam.