[HN Gopher] How we hack Hacker News and consistently hit the fro...
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How we hack Hacker News and consistently hit the front page
Author : muchtest
Score : 115 points
Date : 2023-05-13 16:13 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.indiehackers.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.indiehackers.com)
| [deleted]
| nkurz wrote:
| Vouched for and upvoted because I think it's important for
| readers here to see how much effort goes into creating posts that
| game the system. I think it's better for these strategies to be
| known than hidden. It will be interesting to see how tactics like
| this one evolve as ChatGPT use becomes more widespread.
|
| There's a definite tension between the rule of not accusing other
| users of being shills and the reality that there are quite a few
| shills out there. I think it a still good rule, but not because
| it's never right. Rather, the rule is good because the false
| accusations do more harm than letting some shilling slip by.
| bombcar wrote:
| There's a silent part of that rule: if you suspect a shill,
| gather the evidence and present it to dang via email.
| dang wrote:
| Yes please.
|
| Edit: actually not so silent - it's the latter part of this
| guideline from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: " _Please
| don 't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots,
| brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades
| discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about
| abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data._"
|
| It's part of the contract we have with HN users - we ask them
| not to post this stuff in the threads, but in return we
| always look into cases that they report to us directly.
| marketingLizard wrote:
| How long do shill posts last before they've been taken care
| of?
| gumballindie wrote:
| > It will be interesting to see how tactics like this one
| evolve as ChatGPT use becomes more widespread.
|
| I suspect there may already be openai shills around here. While
| not using chatgpt for spam they may still be promoting it like
| mad. Notice there are few alternatives shared and open source
| models are much less frequently mentioned.
| ouid wrote:
| [flagged]
| yuliyp wrote:
| A comment attacking someone for being a shill is expressing
| skepticism in the most trivial way, and serves to throw a
| debate into a flamewar rather than actually discussing the
| flaws of their arguments.
| johnny22 wrote:
| I love that rule. I've gotten called a shill for microsoft
| many times when I've mentioned some of the cool aspects of
| their OS design, especially vs Linux.
|
| The thing is, I use linux almost exclusively, but for
| occasional cross platform testing in a vm.
|
| I really dislike being called a shill just for recognizing
| some neat ideas.
| Kiro wrote:
| I would bet 99% of the "obvious shills" are actually not
| shills at all.
| dang wrote:
| There's no such thing as "obviously a shill"--the vast
| majority of such accusations crumble instantly on
| investigation. It's basically just an internet blood sport to
| hurl them at other commenters.
|
| There seems to be a cognitive bias where one's feeling of
| good faith decreases as the distance between someone else's
| opinion and one's own increases [1]. If so, then everyone has
| a "shill threshold": an amount of difference-of-opinion above
| which you will feel like the other person can't possibly be
| speaking honestly. When someone's posts exceed my shill
| threshold, I will feel that there must be some sinister
| reason why they're posting like that (they're a shill,
| they're an astroturfer, they're a foreign psy-op, you name
| it).
|
| The important thing to realize is that this "shill threshold"
| is relative to the perceiver. It's the limit of _your_
| comfort zone, not an objective property of someone else 's
| posts--no matter how objective the perception feels. It
| always feels objective--that's how we get phrases like
| "obviously a shill".
|
| The second thing to realize is that a forum like HN includes
| so many people, with such different views and backgrounds,
| that there is a constant stream of posts triggering
| somebody's "shill threshold" or other, purely because their
| views are sufficiently different. Thus the threads are
| guaranteed to fill up with accusations of abuse, even in the
| absence of any actual abuse.
|
| [1] I bet it's nonlinear. Quadratic feels about right.
|
| ---
|
| But real manipulation and abuse also objectively exist, so
| there are two distinct phenomena: Phenomenon A is the
| cognitive bias I just described, and Phenomenon B is actual
| abuse: real shillage, astroturfing, etc. These are completely
| different from each other, despite how similar they feel.
| (The fact that they feel so similar _is_ the cognitive bias.)
|
| Phenomenon A generates overwhelmingly more comments than
| Phenomenon B--way more than 99%--and those comments are
| poison. They turn into flamewars, evoking worse from others
| (who feel unjustly accused and therefore within their rights
| to strike back even harder), and destroy everything we're
| trying for in the community.
|
| What's the solution? We can't allow Phenomenon A (imaginary
| perceptions of abuse) to destroy HN, and we also can't allow
| Phenomenon B (actual abuse, perceived or not) to destroy HN.
|
| Our solution is to forbid users to accuse each other in the
| threads (because we know that such accusations are usually
| false and poison the forum), but to welcome reports of
| possible abuse through a different channel
| (hn@ycombinator.com). This takes care of both Phenomenon A
| (you can't post like that here!) and Phenomenon B (we
| investigate such reports and crack down on real abuse when we
| find it).
|
| To fight actual abuse (Phenomenon B), we need evidence--
| something objective to go on (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRan
| ge=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... ). It can't just be the
| feeling of "obviously a shill", which we know to be
| unreliable. And it can't just be someone having vastly
| different views. Someone having a different opinion is not
| evidence of abuse, it's just evidence that the forum is big
| enough to include a wide range of people.
|
| What we need is some trace of evidence in actual data that we
| can look at. Some data is public (e.g. comment histories),
| other data is not (e.g. voting histories and site access
| patterns). We have a lot of experience doing this and we're
| happy to look when people email us with their suspicions--
| partly because fighting abuse is one of our most important
| functions as site managers, and partly because we owe it to
| users in exchange for (hopefully) not slinging such
| accusations in the threads.
|
| (There's also the question: what about abuse that we _can 't_
| find traces of in the data? Obviously there must be some of
| that and we don't know how much. This is the Sufficiently
| Smart Manipulator problem. It is largely a separate question
| though. I've written about in various places - e.g.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398725, https://hn.alg
| olia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que..., if anybody
| wants to read about that.)
| jsnell wrote:
| Right, I'd say that this post has more value than any of the
| repetitive content marketing these folks churned out for a few
| years, since it hopefully makes some HN readers a bit more
| aware that they're being played.
|
| But the interesting question is: why did they write this
| article?
|
| Is it just that the jig is up, and their one weird trick no
| longer works as well as it did? Did they get asked to cut it
| out by the HN moderators? It seems plausible given how many
| recent submissions to this domain appear to be auto-dead. Do
| they just think HN readers will forget about this article, and
| upvote their next bit of content marketing anyway?
| muchtest wrote:
| Reminds me of the scene with the Mortgage Brokers in The Big
| Short - "They're not confessing, they're bragging"
| everybodyknows wrote:
| > You can post multiple times: HN understands that quality posts
| can go unnoticed, ...
|
| Yes, anecdata: A number of my own highest-quality finds have sink
| with barely a ripple on the "new" page.
|
| > ... so you can try the same post again. Don't overdo it. I
| would say max 2 or 3 times.
|
| Most legit posters have better uses for their remaining lifetime
| minutes of brain activity than to game HN in such a tedious
| exercise.
|
| Various software mitigations to recover credit for otherwise lost
| quality posts occur to me, but the coding effort looks
| substantial.
| dang wrote:
| What are some of the high-quality finds that sank without a
| trace?
|
| Maybe we could send repost invites to put them in the second-
| chance pool! (https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, explained at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308)
| tpmx wrote:
| (Yes, I acknowledge that this stuff is hard, and that a lot of
| effort is going into it.)
|
| It feels like HN moderation is mostly focused on getting the
| comments interesting, not about getting the stories interesting.
|
| HN needs to step up its game here, IMO. There's way too much
| gamed crap reaching the front page. It seems especially bad
| during European office hours when the Californians are asleep.
| dang wrote:
| What are some examples of posts that looked like gamed crap to
| you?
|
| I wouldn't say moderation is more focused on interesting
| comments than interesting stories - at least not consciously or
| intentionally.
| tpmx wrote:
| I'll try to make a list over the coming week or so and email
| you.
| mooreds wrote:
| Good read. I would love if they'd taken the next step and told us
| how the extra traffic and SEO links had helped the business. I
| mean, that's the ultimate goal, and Hacker News doesn't pay the
| bills: https://www.reifyworks.com/writing/2017-03-13-hacker-news-
| do...
|
| The tl;dr of the article is: provide value to the HN audience by
| highlighting articles of interest, possibly adding some extra
| commentary, and you'll get karma points. No gaming, no telling
| folks "vote for my post".
|
| Kinda seems like the system is working!
|
| From my perspective, I do post self-promotional links, but keep
| them to 5-10% of my posts (don't really keep track, that's more
| of a 'look at the last 30 posts and see if I have 2-3 self-
| posts'). Keep the self-promotional stuff quality, and you have to
| share other posts too. (I got a warning when I posted less than
| high-quality links and took it to heart. The mods are definitely
| watching.)
|
| In fact, one of my joys is finding an interesting article from
| someone else and having it 'hit' on HN. It's such a gift to all
| the writers out there who are screaming into the void.
|
| It doesn't always lead to something, but it sure is fun to have
| folks reach out and thank me for the HN spike. Plus the HN crowd
| gets exposed to the quality ideas.
|
| As I said, the system is working.
| shever73 wrote:
| Sorry in advance for the grumpy response, but I hate articles
| like this and I detest the manipulation of an organic voting
| mechanism for self-promotion.
|
| I know this is the Internet we have to live with, but this kind
| of stuff just makes it a worse place to be.
| dmbche wrote:
| Well then again, the articles they write and post (seem?) To
| have value, as they are written "with reaserach, without bs"
| and on newsworthy subjects...
|
| I see this less as "gaming HN" than "realising what the niche
| is" and fulfilling the niche. I guess I'm fine with someone
| posting first about a subject that will be there anyway? Maybe
| I'm not seeing something.
| hackernewds wrote:
| if they were informative and relevant the community would
| naturally upvote them, notwithstanding the manipulation
| efforts. the upvoting of some of the secondary comments on
| critical comments also seems pretty shady NGL
| shever73 wrote:
| It's possible (likely) that I'm not seeing something too.
|
| I read the article in the spirit of the headline, which is
| basically: we wrote a bot to tell us stuff that would do well
| on HN so we can shill our/our clients' stuff. In other words,
| HN becomes an echo chamber of rephrased news articles
| recycled into commercial blogspam.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Well, contrary to what was written today in a comment I
| almost replied to [0] it's more hacker _news_ than _hacker_
| news [1].
|
| So they didn't really hack HN, they merely provided content
| HN likes and did at the right time. I wonder if they could
| hack it more by only providing divisive content that feeds
| on outrage. That'd bring comments and points but most
| likely no new clients or conversions.
|
| Oh, and I have a good example of that ! The other days
| there was a submission about a font from intel designed for
| visually deficient programmers. I got curious and installed
| it then I started thinking about ligatures in code, googled
| a bit and read https://practicaltypography.com/ligatures-
| in-programming-fon...
|
| I found the article interesting and decided to submit it
| but when pasting the title I thought "uh, with a title like
| that, there's going to be some strong reactions/opinions"
| and indeed the top comment thread is
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35926574
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35927503
|
| >> Can someone explain me why people post links to
| Wikipedia articles without any context?
|
| > For the exact same reason people post links to other
| things, it's interesting. It's always been more "hacker"
| than "news" here.*
|
| [1] It's branding/marketing/groupthink...
| hgsgm wrote:
| At the end of the day, dang decides what goes on HN, and all
| the voting and gaming is just advice how him and his software
| to consider. It's not a constitutional democracy.
| dang wrote:
| To me it kind of is a constitutional democracy. We decide the
| rules of the system (constitution) and the community votes
| within that system (democracy). I've used this metaphor a
| fair bit over the years: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=al
| l&page=0&prefix=true&que....
| detaro wrote:
| looking at the submission history for their domain... well, not
| _that_ consistent and one of their accounts seems to be
| automatically killed by the spam filter. :D But I guess this
| confirms the blogspammy feeling I got from them sometimes.
| koboll wrote:
| If you read it, a big part of the secret sauce is "actually be
| thoughtful and informative". Like they drop everything to
| investigate something and surface useful information and
| insights as part of the process. Seems like the opposite of
| spam honestly.
| hackernewds wrote:
| nice try Indiehacker ;)
|
| next article: how we astroturf Hacker news. not too far-
| fetched given they're open to manipulating public sentiment
| on this platform
| samwillis wrote:
| Write or build anything meta Hacker News...
|
| But seriously, create good, intellectually interesting content
| that people will upvote.
| irrational wrote:
| While reading, I kept asking myself why someone would care about
| getting to the front page of HN (saving up this fake points to
| get something good?) until I reached:
|
| > Step 3: The secret sauce We always end with a section that is
| called: Final thoughts. This is your moment to shine and drop a
| punchline that talks about your product/service.
|
| And, there it is.
| jamestimmins wrote:
| This isn't exactly a secret. Everyone who puts their own
| content on HN is hoping to get something from it, including
| companies who often put out high-value content (fly.io comes to
| mind).
| gavinhoward wrote:
| I'm a blogger, and I often want to get on the front page of HN,
| even for posts that are not shilling anything.
|
| It helps get my name in front of people (since my username is
| my real, legal name).
|
| This is a long-term strategy; I am building a business, and the
| more people that know my name when I start announcing things,
| the better.
|
| Yeah, I have an ulterior motive too, but I'm okay with it if
| that motive drives me to do actually good things.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| > No self-promotion or any CTA's in the text
|
| What is a "CTA"?
| detaro wrote:
| "Call To Action" (= "sign up now!" etc)
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| So provide quality content, that readers like, in a timely
| manner.
|
| That's not hacking.
|
| That's how HN is supposed to work.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I don't think there can be much better praise for a site's
| moderation approach than someone deciding that _creating
| relevant, high-quality content_ is the best way to "beat" the
| algorithm/approach.
|
| And someone doing that has certainly earned the right to include
| "one sentence that is the least salesy you can do" of self-
| promotion.
| robust-cactus wrote:
| Ok so, different take - if this what people call "gaming the
| system" I'm all for it.
|
| All this article says is that hackernews likes interesting,
| informative posts that actually tell a real story. And I for one
| am here for that all day. So yes, everyone take this strategy and
| make great content.
| waboremo wrote:
| In other words, they had to hack their own system to get anyone
| to pay attention to the advice of creating informative articles
| with a story to tell.
| davidkunz wrote:
| Just put "written in Rust" in the title, done.
| [deleted]
| imoverclocked wrote:
| This one simple trick HN'ers don't want you to know:
|
| Put ChatGPT, RaspberryPI, Apple or Rust into the title.
| hakanderyal wrote:
| I don't see this post as "hacking" the HN, but in the same vein
| as the famous "Mission ... accomplished" comic from xkcd[0].
|
| I wish more people produced content like the ones they've
| mentioned (about an interesting, current topic, with their own
| take).
|
| [0]: https://xkcd.com/810/
| teekert wrote:
| What gets measured gets done.
|
| The HN+community system appears to accurately measure value to
| its community. Of course we all knew that.
| skilled wrote:
| HN as a whole is a very hackable hivemind if you can bare the
| opinions. Everything else is just news.
| peyton wrote:
| "What we learned writing our backend in Rust"
| furyofantares wrote:
| Another trick, not mentioned, but demonstrated, is pandering.
| yodon wrote:
| Will you let us subscribe to your newsbot? Feel free to put a
| delay on it so you don't get jumped.
| mkl95 wrote:
| I have hit the front page 5 or 6 times just by sharing content I
| find genuinely interesting. HN users have a sixth sense that
| detects organic links vs automated stuff.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Honestly, having had my articles on the front page of HN a few
| times. It's cool but doesn't really change anything and honestly
| compared to other sources such as some Reddit subreddits it's
| smaller and shorter.
|
| But you do get a ton of back links so that makes for go SEO(?)
| trhr wrote:
| I don't click on any "newsworthy" articles here. I just don't
| care enough. I'm here for the how-tos and look-what-i-founds.
| carabiner wrote:
| Spoiler: headline is clickbait and article is a bunch of HN
| reader flattery, so naturally it gets upvoted. It is not a
| critical look at exploiting HN algorithm or audience, it just
| tells people what they want to hear on a lazy Saturday.
| lasfter wrote:
| So it's not clickbait, right? This is how they hack HN!
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