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This exactly. I've tried couple of times with my side project on show HN - https://tardis.dev (aimed at algotraders) and it didn't pick up, but on the other hand on reddit algotrading sub I received useful feedback and even few paying users.

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Sites that display content based on upvotes are inherently chaotic, you can get published or denied for no reason at all. They are just biased into being useful, but there are no guarantees.

A set of small communities, like on Redit, have a much more predictable behavior. If you have content that interests one of them, it is very likely that it will get picked.

I think there are ways to game it, actually. You need someone else to give you that first upvote. I think/assume that those first few upvotes will make it visible to more people which will hopefully attract more upvotes. Of course the content still needs to be good enough to get those upvotes; but it makes it more likely to dodge the risk of good content going ignored because nobody sees it.

I've tried that in limited scope, didn't change much, but perhaps content wasn't good fit for the audience and I accept that.

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