Ask HN: Does Hacker News Employ Anti-Manipulation Measures?

5 points

9 years ago

This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjLsFnQejP8&feature=youtu.be) (reddit comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/5une6u/reddit_is_being_manipulated_by_professional/) clearly shows that Reddit can be and is being manipulated to get stories promoted, sometimes to the front page.

This got me thinking as to whether the votes on Hacker News are being manipulated.

As an example, thinking about the front page in the past months, there seem to be some articles about cloud platforms that don't seem particularly newsworthy to me. News of the sort:

Company A's $Billions/Year Cloud Platform: Now with a new blog!

Company B's $Billions/Year Cloud Platform: Now with niche-use-case feature X.

Company C's $Billions/Year Cloud Platform: A Yearly Review.

Are there anti-manipulation measures in place? Are these types of cloud stories more newsworthy than I thought? Do you worry that vote totals of certain stories on HN are being manipulated?

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