Hacker News Reader

these types of accounts that are created same day and post ragebait are obviously fake.

I know. And it makes me sad. All things being equal, it’s still important to reply and contextualize. It’s not enough to follow the old advice of “Don’t feed the trolls “ because the trolls won the last war and now they’re in power. Now we must keep the torch lit and the banner of facts flying.

Click on the timestamp of the post and then click the "flag" link. A few members in good standing flagging a bad comment will kill it. That's the most expedient way to prevent a troll post from spawning a big off-topic thread that detracts from the content of the submission.

It's also good practice to downvote a post like this before flagging it. They are separate actions, and once an account's cumulative karma drops to -12 (IIRC), all of its posts become dead-by-default.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com