I understand the motivation - running a mini bot farm would allow you to make sure your posts get a number of quick upvotes - or manipulate the conversation about your startup, or some other field one has a vested interest in. But seeing this infestation, and the rate at which it is growing is very demoralizing.
There probably aren't any solutions that don't involve significant privacy invasions or a fundamental change in how the site operates, so maybe this is more of a vent post - but I'm curious if anyone has any suggestions? What happens next? The entire internet becomes (even more) of a greed-manipulated psychological nightmare?
AnimalMuppet•11m ago
I came here from Slashdot, after it turned into too much of a cesspool. And HN was a wonderful place. But over a decade, it slowly became less wonderful. More people showed up just to argue, rather than to have curious conversations. More zealots and shills, less thought.
I think what happened is that HN became a place that was worth influencing. Some people decided they'd do that rather than enjoying it for what it was. The more people on HN, the more valuable it was to manipulate, and so the more people did.
So one solution is just to find smaller forums - ones that aren't big enough to be worth trying to manipulate. That doesn't same HN, though. It doesn't get it back to what I loved.