Banned for Self-Promo | Hacker News Reader

Banned for Self-Promo

antonz.org

2 pointskugurerdem6 comments

Hacker News' policy is that some self-promotion is allowed, but it can't be the focus of most of your posts. There are people who occasionally post their own articles and such but if the majority of their posts are interesting other things, nobody complains (much).

On the other hand, I've flagged items lately that were posted three times in a day by a new user who apparently hadn't read the submission guidelines. That just looks like spam, even if they're "on-topic" for the HN crowd.

I think the important point of the essay was that as long as you are not exploiting anything and trying to add value to the platform, it should not matter whether you are promoting yourself or not.

And yeah, I think HN does a good job of balancing the measures taken against spammers/exploiters vs. providing a place for you to share your essays.

Self-promo (whether on HN, Reddit, Lobsters) or any social platform seems like the most randomly enforced thing. Popular people can self-promo all the time and never get penalized for it, even when it's super blatant. Other, lesser known people try to share 1 link and get banned, but sometimes they don't. /shrug

I know this seems like complaining that the world is unfair, and it is, but it should be called out more often.

Yeah, I think the important thing here (and the point of the essay as well) is that whether the content you share is yours or others' should not matter much as long as you provide value to the platform.

This being said, I also understand having some measures against spammers, and so on...

I think HN does a good job of balancing the measures taken against spammers vs. providing a place for you to share your essays. Especially compared to some of the internet communities I've seen or heard so far. As long as you are an active community member who is not here only to promote yourself, sharing your essays occasionally seems to be perfectly ok.

Yeah I think HN has a better balance than most. Reddit by far is the worst about this.

Self-promo or not, it's all about value. If you are sharing something that adds value to the community it really shouldn't matter.

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