Discussion (243 points, 6 days ago, 169 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43806940

Not to whataboutery but meta had this kind of thing done by researchers, as in social experiments in the commons and it was pretty clear the community at large doesn't appreciate being manipulated.

I'm not sure how good ethics approval processes are if this got up. Doesn't pass the pub test to me.

A double blind where the subreddit is for this kind of thing but it's not clear who is real or not in a thread at least could be said to be consensual.

Rob Pike famously did a circle jerk in Usenet days with robot accounts posting flamage. This is distinct from Mark V Shaney.