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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

You're going to laugh, but I can't post the name. I think there is a bot that downvotes any mention of it, because every time I mention it, I literally get two instant downvotes.

It's a piece of hardware that hooks into your car to make it self driving using software that is open source. If you google that sentence you'll probably find it.

That being said, I'm not entirely mad at the company for it -- discord is the one you should be mad at for their terrible policies, security, and support.

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Being ever curious I followed your suggestion which returned OpenPodcar.

Let's see how this response pans out.

Addendum: Perhaps it was Comma.ai instead? Mind you that proves nothing unless there's a bot that tracks edits to old comments .. so ..

Interesting, that wasn't it.

C o m m a . a i

Good catch, I should try Comma.ai and see how I fare.

Addendum: 10 minutes in and no apparent bot activity; might be timezones, might be limited to a follow bot that's on your tail seeing as you're kind of a bigger name than I am.

Yeah I haven't mentioned Comma.ai and OpenPilot in a while. Let's see what happens!

Edit: So far so good 17 minutes later. Perhaps the bot is dead! Or it was a person doing it who is sleeping. :)

I've not mentioned OpenPilot at all .. so let's ANOVA test this puppy.

Edit: Ditto, 22 minutes and no up or down activity.

Clearly we're dealing with bots that can pass the Turing Test :/

Eh, it was just some fanatic that got tired / found a new religion.

must be one of those new nexus 9 models

I think what you say about downvotes is true. Eg a comment will be popular one minute, and then suddenly it's not. I also get the issue that my overall karma goes down, while recent comment values stay the same - which could be malicious downvoting of historical comments. So, I think something odd goes on. I comment a lot, generally thoughtful comments, and yet my total karma over the past year is way down.

I'm interested to hear what you think it could be. As users we have no visibility of downvotes, who gave them etc. You say bots or people - do you have any reason for thinking this? I'm interested to hear more info, if you have any thoughts.

> I also get the issue that my overall karma goes down, while recent comment values stay the same - which could be malicious downvoting of historical comments.

Historical comments can't be downvoted, or at least the UI doesn't allow it.

It allows it for 1 month.

Really? To me the UI only shows the down-arrow for 1 day. If the API allows downvoting for up to 1 month then automated 'revenge' downvote bots should be easy to detect.

Using this site, I created a custom range search.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=custom&page=1&prefix=true&...

For comments less than 1 month, I see the option to upvote, for older comments I don't.

How do you think I can detect votes from a 'revenge bot'?

Were you worried about the 'revenge bot' upvoting you, or downvoting you?

I want to know what factors are in play in managing information on this site.

You might get better results if you connected the things you say to the things you secretly mean. People are only going to respond to the things you say.

I don't understand your comment. You seem to be saying I'm unclear or something.

Have you read any of my comments? I'm as explicit as I can be on this site.

However, if you are trying to say something more specific, please do.

Thank you for the heads up.

Always figured a console-hacker turned semi-rogue AI car hardware maker was sketch, but this is garbage scow class.

So, comma.ai is a "NO PURCHASE".

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