Botnets Auto-Downvoting on HN? | Better HN

17 comments

13 comments · 6 top-level

stadia42OP5y ago· 5 in thread

25 minutes later, the comment no longer shows as "dead", it's just a normal comment. Maybe people upvoted it? But how? I thought dead comments have no upvote button?

Or maybe there are no botnets, and I simply don't understand the mechanics of "dead" in HN. Like maybe some users get automatic "dead" status to their comments due to past violations? (That would be a bit strange though.)

detaro5y ago

> Like maybe some users get automatic "dead" status to their comments due to past violations?

That what happens: HN doesn't fully ban people, but instead just hides their comments by default. (e.g. what happens if you see dang comment "we've banned this user")

stadia42OP5y ago

So this automatic hiding by HN are indistinguishable to the regular users from the "dead" comments caused by downvoting? And the regular users can revive such automatically "hidden" comments in exactly the same way as they can revive comments downvoted to death?

About "we've banned this user": do you mean some comments will be replaced by this message, but others (future?) comments will be automatically assigned dead status but still visible?

ezekg5y ago

You can click the timestamp of a dead comment and vouch for it. You may also have to enable showdead, not sure.

You can enable a "showdead" option which would show dead comments and allow you to upvote them.

stadia42OP5y ago

Thanks! That at least explains how the comment became undead.

floatingatoll5y ago· 1 in thread

The site admins have posted before asking that anyone who thinks they see botting or other malicious behaviors to please email them using the Contact link in the footer.

If you haven’t done so and you’d like your concern to be reviewed by the site admins, I encourage you to do so; they haven’t replied here by now, which means they won’t see this unless you do email them.

stadia42OP5y ago

Thank you! I did contact dang, and everything is fine :) No evil botnets are involved!

LinuxBender5y ago· 1 in thread

Did you email dang and ask? Both of the moderators have been very open and responsive to questions when I have emailed them.

  hn@ycombinator.com

stadia42OP5y ago

Yes, dang is super nice, he responded to my message and confirmed that everything is working as intended!

Up and downvoting on HN works in mysterious ways. I don't think there are botnets voting. If there are, they are spending their time upvoting content. My theory is that HN has an "anger management" feature. That is, if a user is posting comments that others down vote, the system assumes that the user is "angry" and automatically penalizes their subsequent comments. Feel free to down vote and flag this comment so that I can test my theory.

Likely killed by a spam filter. See:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10638699

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10473918

New accounts can start shadowbaned (algorithms), this account is 1 day old.

Then people can vouch on dead comments.

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