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Comment by jandrese | Hacker News Reader

Say anything even remotely negative about HFT and these guys pull out the claws. They don't hesitate to downvote either. It's really quite blatant once you know what to look for.

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Wait, why would high-frequency traders care what people on reddit think? It's not like they're trying to sell their services to the public.

Are you sure you're not just seeing the usual flame wars over controversial subjects?

They appear to have been hired (or had their funding greatly increased) around the time Flashboys came out. It's not just Reddit either, you see them all across the web.

Serious question, though. How do you distinguish between the situation you're describing, and a situation where the release of Flash Boys resulted in a lot of zeitgeisty discussion about HFT, where people hashed out their differing opinions about it.

I ask because I don't think that the case against HFT is airtight, or that either side is obviously right. A lot of smart people have defended HFT to some extent (including HN's favorite finance writer, Matt Levine[0]).

I get the sense that there are a lot of people out there who read Flash Boys and assumed that HFTs are obviously the bad guys. I'm something of a contrarian, and pointing out the arguments in favor of HFT to those people is the kind of thing I would have done. (I don't remember a particular instance, but I probably did at one point.) In that situation, I wouldn't be surprised if some people assumed that I was a paid Wall Street shill (because obviously that's the only kind of person who would defend HFT under any circumstances, right?)

So while I'm not denying that manipulation does happen, I'm worried that it will give people license to discount anyone that disagrees with their personal received wisdom as nothing more than corporate puppets.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-03-31/michael-l...

I really doubt wall street is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on equipment because they care about market liquidity. These people/services add absolutely nothing of value to society yet they suck up billions of dollars.

Very relevant:

https://youtu.be/TFPugioX7uk?t=22

If banks could have paid a few agent provocateurs to disrupt the occupy Wall Street movement and handicap it out the gate, do you think they would have? Muddying the waters is a cheap and easy tactic to use.

Do you really think any banks were concerned enough about Occupy Wall Street to bother trying to disrupt it? I'm sure they were quaking in their boots.

And then they remembered the Glass-Steagal act was spurred by anti-bank hate and decided to hedge their bets. The cost of fielding a few sock puppets is literally a drop in the bucket for them, they don't have to regard OWS as an existential threat, merely in the way of their policy goals.

I've heard a lot of theories about Reddit, but nothing about HFT. Do you have any link/source?

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