Botnets Auto-Downvoting on HN?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26313296

by stadia42 • 5 years ago

10 17 5 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Here's a screenshot where someone made a (completely uncontroversial) comment, and within 1 minute was downvoted to "dead". Looking at their history, all of their comments since yesterday have been downvoted to dead, most (but not all) of them equally uncontroversial.

https://ibb.co/sCHB7th

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26312652

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bopbeepboop

I cannot find any other explanation besides a botnet that targets specific users for instant downvoting when they post a new comment. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I thought it would be good to bring this up to the attention of the community.

Edit: just confirmed that this wasn't a fluke, a response by that user to the thread he's involved in is again showing as dead, at 0 minutes: https://ibb.co/P6KghWr.

stadia427• 5 years ago

25 minutes later, the comment no longer shows as "dead", it's just a normal comment. Maybe people upvoted it? But how? I thought dead comments have no upvote button?

Or maybe there are no botnets, and I simply don't understand the mechanics of "dead" in HN. Like maybe some users get automatic "dead" status to their comments due to past violations? (That would be a bit strange though.)

Nextgrid• 5 years ago

You can enable a "showdead" option which would show dead comments and allow you to upvote them.

stadia427• 5 years ago

Thanks! That at least explains how the comment became undead.

detaro• 5 years ago

Like maybe some users get automatic "dead" status to their comments due to past violations?

That what happens: HN doesn't fully ban people, but instead just hides their comments by default. (e.g. what happens if you see dang comment "we've banned this user")

stadia427• 5 years ago

So this automatic hiding by HN are indistinguishable to the regular users from the "dead" comments caused by downvoting? And the regular users can revive such automatically "hidden" comments in exactly the same way as they can revive comments downvoted to death?

About "we've banned this user": do you mean some comments will be replaced by this message, but others (future?) comments will be automatically assigned dead status but still visible?

ezekg• 5 years ago

You can click the timestamp of a dead comment and vouch for it. You may also have to enable showdead, not sure.

LinuxBender• 5 years ago

Did you email dang and ask? Both of the moderators have been very open and responsive to questions when I have emailed them.

  hn@ycombinator.com

stadia427• 5 years ago

Yes, dang is super nice, he responded to my message and confirmed that everything is working as intended!

aaron695• 5 years ago

New accounts can start shadowbaned (algorithms), this account is 1 day old.

Then people can vouch on dead comments.

bjourne• 5 years ago

Up and downvoting on HN works in mysterious ways. I don't think there are botnets voting. If there are, they are spending their time upvoting content. My theory is that HN has an "anger management" feature. That is, if a user is posting comments that others down vote, the system assumes that the user is "angry" and automatically penalizes their subsequent comments. Feel free to down vote and flag this comment so that I can test my theory.

yamrzou• 5 years ago

Likely killed by a spam filter. See:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10638699

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10473918

floatingatoll• 5 years ago

The site admins have posted before asking that anyone who thinks they see botting or other malicious behaviors to please email them using the Contact link in the footer.

If you haven’t done so and you’d like your concern to be reviewed by the site admins, I encourage you to do so; they haven’t replied here by now, which means they won’t see this unless you do email them.

stadia427• 5 years ago

Thank you! I did contact dang, and everything is fine :) No evil botnets are involved!

Botnets Auto-Downvoting on HN?

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