And let's not have the illusion that HN an pg are too smart to be manipulated by people that are at least as clever as we are but who have specialized themselves in manipulating people instead of bits and bytes.

No place where human beings gather, virtual of physical, is safe from this. It's only the clueless an lazy ones that get caught like this.

"And let's not have the illusion that HN an pg are too smart to be manipulated by people..."

You're vastly underestimating how many people are interconnected in this hodgepodge of gray matter we call HN.

Blind allegiance (or antipathy) is not how things work here.

Part of the reason this community is different from others is that the best way to respect people like pg or tptacek or anyone else who's been around is to call them on something when you disagree. I think that's how they'd like it as well.

It has nothing to do with being "smarter". It's got everything to do with being genuine.

In that regard SO is at a marked disadvantage because it's such a tempting target for drive-by dropping of bait for marketing. With the exception of a handful of long time contributors, the vast number of accounts there have no discussion between each other (since that itself leads to the question getting closed) and so they have no means to get to know each other really. That's not what happens here.

You can follow people, you can read their past threads. You can even go back and watch people evolve in their thought process with the kinds of discussions we've had. Try that on SO.

You may have missed a few threads. HN has had brand/tribe/loyalty slap-fights. More than a few. And more frequently as of late.

Blind allegiance and antipathy tend to bump into things frequently. The noise they cause makes them easy to spot.

There's noise in any community, but if it's the same alley cats, you learn to ignore them. I always scroll below to the end of the threads (one of the reasons I never seem to get anything done after landing on HN) to see what I've missed. The populist upvotes aren't always the most interesting and below aren't the least so as long as you follow your own rhythm, not swayed by language, it's easy to tell when someone tackles ideas than sentiment.

And you're vastly underestimating how easy astroturfing is to do, and how cheap/effective it is to implement with a captive audience (i.e. HN).

And, no I am not finding fault with the connection to YC or the special status, just pointing out that the HN playing field is not natural grass, and that it is that way for very reasonable reasons and that it is, in my opinion, almost certainly to the benefit of the HN community.

On a site with a larger commercial tie in, "astroturfing" like "weed" in a horticultural setting lacks scientific definition.

Also, from what I've seen, astroturfing for ideology is far more effective than for products since often that's something the participant believes in. And it's easier to elicit emotions over ideology than products (unless we're talking programming languages, but then that's sacred ground to begin with).

[1] SO is most certainly not a "community".

It's only the clueless an lazy ones that get caught like this.

Those seem fairly contradictory to me. Unless you are saying HN and pg are clueless and lazy, then I guess not.

This is really no different than stuffing your mailbox with flyers, sending you spam or having the tv people write product placement into your favorite show.

Evidently it works, which is really disappointing.