You can't attack a fellow user like that on HN, and you particularly can't post insinuations of shillage or astroturfing. The damage comments like this cause is greater than the damage they're purporting to combat. I can tell you from long experience with actual data that most of these accusations are based on pure imagination. That's why the site guidelines explicitly ask you not to post like this. If you think you're seeing abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it.
pron has been a fine HN member for many years and has been commenting substantively on these topics for a long long time. You owe him an apology.
People need to be free to discuss their work here without getting flamed. For most of us, our work is the thing we know the most about. Disincentivizing people from showing up here to talk about what they know about would be an insanely bad idea for HN, and these consequences can easily happen without being obvious, so we need to err on the opposite side.
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