I totally agree that the community should protect itself from being defrauded. I actually support the measures you are taking on that front. I just wanted to bring to your attention, as a pretty active and interested user of HN, that it has changed and the system pushes people to do this kind of stuff. It's fostering competition to do it, because that's what it takes to get to the front page. I suspect that this happens in most cases. Look, I could be wrong - you have way more data than me - but using just what's available to me suggests that "asking friends to give you a couple upvotes in the crucial first few minutes" happens a lot. Heck, I did it in the past once or twice and it worked. The problem is that this mentality causes the element to become necessary. That, or clickbait.
We don't want this in the community, I agree, but it's like punishing X in individual cases while the system almost requires X to get to the front page in the first place. It is not about a "right" to get anything noticed on HN. It's about the incentive structure that develops over time as the system grows and changes.
Bitcoin started out to be decentralized and now is in the hands of several miners, and fees have gone up. Saying that there is "no right to have a transaction be recorded in the ledger" doesn't mean there isn't an incentive problem with a root. The root of that problem is the escalating proof-of-work arms race.
Authorities in the drug war thought if only they got low level dealers to rat out their suppliers there would be no more drugs on the street, but the incentive structure of money to be made on drugs caused a problem. The root of that problem is an escalating arms race between the feds and the cartels caused the drug gangs become more ruthless and publicly execute the families of those who ratted people out, greatly increasing violence.
The root of this problem is an escalating arms race to get noticed as HN has grown. But perhaps there is no problem. If there is, however, this is NOT OFF-TOPIC. The topic is gaming the system. And I am saying this as someone who wants to see less of it, but recognizes that the system now encourages it more than in the past.
