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Comment by underover | Hacker News Reader

I predicted this move several days ago based on this comment.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1130231

I have long suspected that Andrew has been using fake accounts or paying people to put a positive spin on his threads. The above comment was made by a brand new a account and follows a trend of other fishy comments.

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I'm in Buenos Aires. My IP would stand out in a minute.

What you'll probably find if you keep searching the comments here is that many people will say that I emailed or called them personally after they commented on my work here.

I'm engaged in this community and that's easier and more effective than setting up dummy accounts.

"I have long suspected that Andrew has been using fake accounts or paying people to put a positive spin on his threads. The above comment was made by a brand new a account and follows a trend of other fishy comments."

I have had the same suspicion for quite a while and am surprised no one has looked into this. Glad to hear someone else thinks it's not just the little voices in my head.

PG addressed it here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1131005

AndrewWarner does link directly to HN and ask for votes, so it's quite likely that people register specifically to upvote/comment for his submissions.

I would like to see him comment on the ruby35 account, it is quite suspicious: http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ruby35

Thanks for that. I hadn't seen his comment.

bob345 made me look twice, very defensive and an account less than 2 hours old

The above comment was made by a brand new a account and follows a trend of other fishy comments.

I think that if you have no evidence to substantiate these accusations, then you should keep them to yourself.

I mean, he can easily just be one of the many happy frequent visitors of Mixergy? Andrew does post links to here quite often from the Mixergy site, and they can easily just follow that link.

Though, I must admit as a guy who loves the Mixergy interviews, who is currently saving up for his own startup; I am currently forgoing a cell phone, car, insurance and any other unnecessary expenses, and I cannot validate a $25-100/mo charge for this content. Its valuable, but not that valuable to me. I think he forgot about his bootstrapped followers who can't watch his interviews live and often catch them after the fact.

Though in hindsight, this just may increase the viewership of his live shows - which is an increase in viewer participation in the interview process. Perhaps that is his goal?

Thanks.

It's not about the live shows so much as it is about getting people to watch my interviews the day or week that post them.

What I'm finding is that if I don't create urgency around watching the interviews the day I watch them, people will consider them old and ignore them.

That makes a lot of sense. But if that's your objective, I'd argue for making it $10 or even $5 a month rather than $25. At $25 you'll cut out a LOT of people who would be ideal viewers for these interviews.

Your account here was made 4 days ago.

Does that somehow discredit his opinion?

When one uses the date of creation of an account to discredit it, yes; also note that underover has one comment (this one), while the account being accused (stevenp) has three, only one of which relates to this topic. Not especially relevant under normal conditions - opinions and information are more important, and all that - but, once again, underover is using this to accuse someone else of being a sock puppet, while his[1] argument also suggests that he is a sock puppet - admittedly, if his name had a c in it, that would go without saying, but it would be nice to get a disclaimer stating that he's a shell account used by another user to maintain anonymity, if that is in fact the case.

[1] I have no evidence that underover is male; I'm merely using the masculine pronouns by default.

Not really. underover was suggesting these new accounts should be discredited because their newness and pro-Andrew bias suggests they were perhaps created by Andrew. That criticism cannot apply to him, because why would Andrew create an account to criticize himself?

...and here's an account not from Argentina. Have PG check it.

Your assertion that Andrew created these new accounts is sophomoric and pathetic.

I never claimed I agreed or disagreed with OP's assertions, I was merely trying to clarify the argument.

I see what you mean but I guess I see an important difference between creating a sockpuppet in these two circumstances.

On the one hand creating an account to protect your anonymity when you make a potentially inflammatory accusation about the behavior of a prominent member of the community.

And on the other, creating an account to make it appear that you have more support on the forum than you actually have.

I find the latter to be a serious problem whereas the former seems reasonable and ethical.

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