Accusing a fellow commenter of astroturfing is not allowed on Hacker News. Please don't do this or any other kind of personal attack here.
It's sad that comments that offer nothing but generic dismissals and teardowns automatically get upvoted, while an enthusiastic—and more substantive, agree with it or not—comment gets accused of being a paid fraud.
Stating that I feel a comment is astroturf is not a personal attack. It may be against the rules, and I will refrain from as such, but it is most certainly not a personal attack, it is a statement that I feel the _comment_ is disingenuous, and I said so in a light-hearted manner at that. The comment seemed over the top in its praise, and was not a teardown at all.
Further, I see nothing in the rules about calling out astroturf, the closest I saw was about being civil, which I most certainly was. I pointed out the comment felt like astroturfing, and said absolutely nothing impolite, rude, or even slightly uncivil. I'm sorry you saw it otherwise. It was meant to be a lighthearded poke, hence the ebay-style comment at the end.
I believe you that you didn't mean it that way, but that's a sign of how easy it is to convey things you don't mean, such as that a person is deliberately lying and being paid for it. The negative effect of a comment like that is probably a hundred times greater than the maximum one would ever imagine when posting it. And it only takes a few to poison the discourse.
The biggest problem with trying to hold this site to the HN guidelines is that most violations are unintentional. Obvious trolling is easier to deal with.
That's fine, but I think "no astroturfing nor accusations of astroturfing" wouldn't burden the rule list unnecessarily. Given HN's status in this industry, this is a prime locale for personal politics to creep into comments, and making clear that aspect won't be tolerated would only benefit the community, and would remove room for debate about that rule. Just a suggestion.
dang is absolutely right and your comment should be downvoted to oblivion. Because if you look, beenpoor made the exact same comment but without couching it in your poisonous language. benpoor wrote:
>Man, you should tone down your reverence :)
Which is the same thing in civil terms. (Per the guidelines, something you could say to someone you were having a personal conversation with face-to-face.)
For what it's worth, I found numair's comment (GGP you replied to) very worthwhile, I appreciated the time that he took to write it, and was wondering if he was correct!
Elsewhere in this thread another commenter, dunkelheit, above wrote "I .. doubt that depictions of the workings of VC firms from this article should be taken at face value."
So, we have dunkelheit wondering if it should be taken at face value, we have numair basically stating that he thinks it does: "The behind-the-scenes look at Instacart's latest funding round was really interesting...Again, such an honest look at the inner workings of Andreesen and his colleagues."
We have a lot of readers here who can clear up whether numair is correct that this is an accurate and honest look. We have readers who know Marc personally.
I guarantee that you will not elicit them to share their thoughts with what you wrote. Instead you could have simply written, "This is so lavishly praising I wonder whether you have been funded by A16z. Do you have a disclosure to make?"
As it stands, your comment completely derailed the thread. This is why it should simply have been killed and hidden without any discussion, not due to the content but the exact form you chose to express it in.
I have to agree with burnte. The OP is brown nosing so hard it definitely looks like astro-turfing.
Also, I disagree that calling out astroturfing is a violation of the HN rules/guidelines. I can think of several recent threads where people have called out astroturfing and NOT been flagged and punished, and have actually been voted up.
If nothing else, such an accusation should be refuted with evidence to the contrary, rather than getting flagged and removed.
Of course such accusations get voted up: they stoke indignation, which invariably gets voted up. That's a weakness of the voting system, not evidence of fairness. HN can't go by upvotes alone.
Accusing someone of deliberately faking their comments in order to co-opt discussion for an external interest is so far beyond the pale of civility that I'm not sure what else to tell you. It's my job to interpret the guidelines. That is the interpretation.
> Accusing someone of deliberately faking their comments in order to co-opt discussion for an external interest is so far beyond the pale of civility that I'm not sure what else to tell you.
I truly and honestly believe you're seeing a level of animosity that genuinely is not there. I believe you may be reacting on a more reflexive level to a type of comment more than my actual comment, which is understandable to a degree. Yes, the first sentence said "you've more than earned your pay" but that sentence does not exist in a vacuum. It is immediately followed with a joke that to the vast majority of people would demonstrate a lighthearted mood in the comment, and I believe also would communicate to most people that my comment is a farcical statement. Yes, text is devoid of many contextual clues, but one context clue it is not missing is the entirely of the message.
I understand your interpretation, and we can agree to disagree on that aspect, but I would urge you to reconsider the position that my comment was "so far beyond the pale of civility". I made a joke about the tone of his comment, I did not accuse his family of contributing to genocide.
Oh, I'm definitely responding to the category of comment, and I totally believe you that you meant yours as a joke. But you're way, way overestimating how apparent that joke was.
I guess it's just a little odd how the HN moderators are quick defending millionaire VC Marc Andreessen, but have had nothing to say when others have been accused of astroturfing. In the other cases, it's been enough to let the voting system do its work, but in this particular case, the mods are quick to point out the weaknesses of the voting system and accuse nay sayers of lacking civility.
It's true that we don't catch everything; we don't see everything. If you or anyone would like to help, we'd be grateful. Gently reminding users not to break the guidelines is one way. Emailing us (hn@ycombinator.com) when you see them being broken is another.
Accusing a fellow commenter of astroturfing is not allowed on Hacker News. Please don't do this or any other kind of personal attack here.
It's sad that comments that offer nothing but generic dismissals and teardowns automatically get upvoted, while an enthusiastic—and more substantive, agree with it or not—comment gets accused of being a paid fraud.
Edit: I've detached this subthread from its original parent (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9523498) and marked it off-topic.