HACKER Q&A
📣 alexmolas

What's going on with posts getting hundreds of upvotes in minutes?


For the last few days some posts have appeared gathering hundreds of upvotes in a few minutes. In particular [0] and [1]. What's going on with these posts? Even if they're flagged they keep appearing in `\best`. I'm afraid that this can become a common practice and pollute HN.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36860953 [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36860065

  👤 darkclouds Accepted Answer ✓
Everyone is at it. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op...

All the security services in a country have the telco network of that country at their disposal.

For example one way to spot spooks including the bbc is to see the comments made that are medical based.

For example, manganese in the UK can be mentioned as good for connective tissue ie tendons, UK govt controls health claims so this post on kangaroo tendons https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36784998 is trolling manganese users.

Different countries have different opinions on biology so one way to spot a sock puppet from a country is to see what medical stuff they are talking about. Its something that can catch the 5eyes out when working in a coordinated manner.

👤 sethammons
looks like a poorly executed voting ring. I hope dang et al have discovered the upvoters and shadow banned them.