Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

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We've banned this account for being a pro-Microsoft astroturfer who has plagued HN for years. This person (or persons) is an accomplished if not professional pro-Microsoft astroturfer whose "contributions" to Hacker News consist of shilling for Microsoft, slagging Microsoft competitors, and covering their tracks. They've made networks of accounts to reply to each other and create the false impression of conversation. At one point they even created fake female identities to make it look like when we banned them, we were banning women.

We ban any account that evidence suggests is part of this campaign or anything similar. Users who think they see signs of this are invited to email us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate. Please don't level accusations of astroturfing at other users in threads, though. For every case like this one that really is astroturfing, there are dozens more of legit users simply holding divergent views. We don't want a culture of accusing others lightly.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11900781 and marked it off-topic.

I take it this is a matter of the mods having some access to information that I don't (given that this account is only 2 days old), but:

In this case, I think much of what this user posted sounds pretty reasonable. I'm not a Microsoft fanboy or anything, but all the vitriol Microsoft gets in light of all the love that Apple and Google get seems silly to me.

I think the concerns some people have that Microsoft will quickly return to their old ways are legitimate, but also a little on the paranoid side. That argument is contingent on Microsoft actually regaining their market position that they once had in the 90s and early 00s, which, frankly, I don't think will ever happen: most developers now flat-out expect that their development tools will be Freely-available ("Free as in Freedom", etc.); most end-users now expect that the "apps" they want will be available for free or at least very cheaply (with prices listed in cents rather than dollars) -- I've seen many comments in the Google Play store where users are complaining about the price of a $2 app, forget about $5 completely. Frankly, people simply aren't willing to pay for software anymore. Regardless of how you feel about that, it's obviously the case these days. As such, I don't think it's unfair to claim that "free software has won".

Furthermore, Microsoft seems to be catching a lot of flak for things that Apple and Google do on the regular, yet many are willing to overlook. I recall seeing a recent thread here on HN in which a user pointed out that Google's update practices are the same if not worse than the recent Windows 10 update fiasco. Yet, you don't see nearly as many people complaining about it.

Finally, it should be obvious that any for-profit business exists for the purpose of generating profit. Given that, it should be no wonder that a business's behavior will be driven by a motive of revenue. Especially in the case of publicly-traded companies, there has been a long history of business behavior motivated by shareholders' interests.

All that said, I have to trust that the HN moderators made the right decision here, but I honestly haven't seen this user make any claims in this particular thread that seem unreasonable. Yes, they are defending Microsoft in their comments, but sometimes I feel as though Microsoft actually needs defending in nerd-circles nowadays, simply because their checkered past makes many of us unwilling to accept that Microsoft may have actually made a change of face recently. Furthermore, is a pro-Microsoft shill really any worse than an anti-Microsoft shill? Going yet further, I've seen plenty of HN users who talk like pro-Apple shills, yet it seems that since so many around here agree with them, that's deemed acceptable.

Anyway, I just wanted to put in my 2¢. Thank you for all that you do to keep this place clean, even if I might not always agree on what constitutes cleanliness :)

Yes, in this case it's a matter of us having data that isn't public.

Although I don't agree that that account's comments in the thread were reasonable (they were highly uncivil, which is a bit of a new tactic for them), you can't judge this kind of abuse by the reasonableness of individual comments alone. This person or organization does professional-level dissumulation and manipulation of online discussions to deliver false impressions and corrupt the community. I rarely use such strong language (indeed I post far more comments asking users not to accuse each other of astroturfing). I do so in this case because they've done a lot of damage to HN over the years and because users need to know how seriously we take real abuse when we see it. Each time this person or organization shows up again, we crack down hard, and publicly. They should know that they're hurting Microsoft's reputation, not helping it.

Most MS-related comments on HN, though, are by legit users. The generalizations people constantly make about the HN community—in this case how it sees MS—are nearly always bogus, driven by cognitive bias, not data. I see a ton of people complaining that HN has gone to shit because it's full of Microsoft promoters [1] and an opposing ton of people complaining that it's full of Microsoft haters. The explanation is that the community is simply divided. Both sides can point to lots of comments that seem to support their favored generalization, but going from "I notice comments that rub me the wrong way" to "HN is full of shills posting against/for the things I like/dislike" is a non sequitur.

1. An example I responded to at length is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11840127.

Thanks for the response. Now I know, and knowing is half the battle!

Every time I see people complaining about how "HN as gone to shit", I check to see how long they've been a registered user. I'm not the most veteran HNer, but I've been around for about 6 years now, and if anything I think the quality of the site has tended to improve ever-so-slightly over the years, though I feel that it tends to fluctuate a bit. There was also a noticeable boost when you and your crew took the reigns as mods (I don't mean to ass-kiss here, I really feel that way). I sometimes wonder if I missed out on some sort of Golden Age of HN...

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