Not to derail things further, but can you provide us more details about this astroturfing? How do you know who this person is? What is the background story here?

Sounds interesting...

Unfortunately I can't give details to you without also giving them to astroturfers who would use them to make HN worse. Here are a couple of previous examples though:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18094982

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17971835

It goes back many years before that.

I'm actually quite interested in what about this comment rates the label of astroturfing. Is "astroturfing" now like "gaslighting", that is a word that has lost whatever objective meaning it once had? Are all people with a financial stake in Google required to disclose that at the end of their remarks? If so, dang would have a field day banning accounts that post in Tesla threads.

As a person who is now on my 50th HN account, I find the moderation policies here capricious and arbitrary.

It's not about the content of any single post; the point of astroturfing is to make that indistinguishable. It's about patterns of behavior, some of which are publicly visible and some not. When someone is using HN to advance the interests of a particular corporation, that's not good-faith community membership, and it breaks the organizing principle of this site—intellectual curiosity—egregiously.

Re your accounts, I'm not sure what has felt capricious and arbitrary to you, but from my perspective it's simply a matter of following the site guidelines and using HN in the intended spirit. We discussed that at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22173082 (but also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22359424). If there's some aspect of moderation that still isn't transparent to you (or anyone!) I'm happy to do my best to explain, and even happier to correct any mistakes. But it would be better to send those to hn@ycombinator.com.

"Astroturfing" is a political concept. It's about making a top-down initiative appear to be a bottom-up one instead. Fake "grassroots". AstroTurf, see?

What you're talking about, as best as I can tell, is called "fanboyism" -- individual devotion characterized by unusually strong vocality and blindness to contradictory evidence.

Fanboys are extremely common in tech, but usually associated with companies that make products with particularly elegant design (Apple, Tesla) or with a strong sociopolitical component to their identity.

It's a familiar distinction. You've expressed it particularly well. We don't have the real-world information about users that would be needed to make such calls with certainty (nor would we want it!), but based on what I've seen, I don't believe it's fanboyism in this case.

More importantly, it's a distinction without a difference in cases like this. When someone is using dozens of accounts to post corporate propaganda to HN over many years, they're abusing the site and we ban them.

I've been posting here for 8 years, and have never noticed moderation until one of the moderators points it out like the top of this thread.

Further, I have been posting on /. and other forums since the 90's and have never been banned.

If you are on your 51st account here, perhaps the problem is you and not with the people running the show.

The reason I’m on my zillionth account isn’t because of comments of mine, but because somehow my ex-wife’s IP is radioactive and if I happen to load HN on my mobile while on her wifi and waiting for my kids the account I’m logged into gets silently hell-banned. Dang has promised it won’t happen again.

My first HN account name was my full real name. I have a three-digit slashdot user number and that account also uses my real full name. I believe in communities online.

That's not quite consistent with my understanding of the situation. But yes, if you follow the site guidelines and stick to a consistent account, we won't ban you. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22176413

As a person literally just used as an example of moderation practices above, I think dang and sctb do a really good job here. There's a lot of weird lines they have to walk. For example, that while Googlers defending their company can be astroturfing, Googlers also know a lot about Google and can contribute original info and answers others can't.

The HN guidelines haven't changed significantly in a long time, and dang and sctb miss a lot because HN is huge and nobody can read every comment, but they do a pretty good job when they step in. If you're on your 50th account, perhaps you should see if you can modify your posting to stay afloat of the rules. (On your 51st account, presumably, since you just told one of the moderators you're an account evading a ban.) And if you have questions or concerns about moderation, or feel you were unfairly impacted, there's a contact email in the footer and they're actually really good dudes you can talk to.

It baffles me why someone banned 49 times would want to participate the 50th time. This is like being kicked out of someone's house and coming in a different disguise each time.

At some point I'd just conclude they don't want me there and walk away.

Thanks for reframing that as something valuable about HN. I should think of it that way more often!

I don't know about any other similarities, but "astroturfing" and "gaslighting" are English words that share this in common: they both have a useful meanings that seems to be primarily used correctly and in context; however they also are bandied about in non-canonical ways by a much smaller number of people with high repetition.

I'm really curious, do you feel that your (assuming they were) bans #1-49 were unjustified? If so, could you expand on why that's the case?

If it’s true ‘astroturfing’ then it could easily be a professional operation.

If it's true astroturfing then it is by definition a professional operation. Astroturfing has to be directed by an institutional authority, otherwise it actually is grassroots.

Single-purpose accounts driving an agenda in a deceptive way aren't necessarily institutional. Normally I wouldn't quibble about definitions, but since I used the word astroturfing above, I want to emphasize that I'm not saying they work for Google. We don't know that, and for HN anti-abuse purposes, it doesn't matter.

They could work for a law firm or some other subcontractor of Google without Google actually knowing about it.

Thank you for doing this.

Disclaimer: No association with Google or the banned account. Also, strongly disagree with the banned user's take on the suit.

This ban seems unfair, and if it is rooted in an anti-astroturfing policy, then that policy appears way too aggressive - no one wants HN to be a marketing site for mega-corps, but passionately defending one's favorite company shouldn't result in a ban. Also, the moderators have all the power, and accused none. While moderating is likely arduous and maybe even moribund, being a fanboy/AstroTurf-er especially one not behaving badly, isn't worthy of silencing/banning (that's my opinion).

The consumers of HN content have a healthy skepticism towards polarizing opinions, and as with all social media, have their guard up on what can be blindly trusted. This ban assumes your average HN-er cannot tell a fanboy apart from a neutral third party - which is not the case. Let opinions be, let the fanboys talk freely (as long as they're not impolite), and trust the HN audience to use their better judgement in drawing any conclusions. I don't think anyone assumes the top comment on any topic to be an endorsement by YC/HN, or it's users.

I can appreciate that it seems that way, but this person has been doing this for many years with dozens of accounts. If you saw what we see, I think you'd consider it abusive too, and I'm certain that the community as a whole would.

You don't have to look far through https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... to see how many hours I've spent defending users accused of astroturfing and telling other users that they can't sling such accusations without evidence. That problem is actually far more serious than this one, in its corrosive effects. But the flip side is that it does occasionally happen that the evidence is so unequivocal that public banning is called for, and this is one of those cases.

I don't personally see why it matters if an account has a penchant for supporting one company. Optimally ideas would stand alone and be evaluated without consideration of the author. Thus it would be irrelevant if an account is a "shill."

Curious: Why do sites like HN and Reddit, those most vulnerable to abuse by multiple accounts, don’t require mandatory email or even phone verification?

Let people have multiple accounts for privacy if they want, but disallow multiple posts/comments/votes from the same person.

I can't speak for Reddit, but on HN the idea is not to place barriers in front of anyone who wants to join. If we demand that people jump through extra hoops, many will simply bail instead, including many who were inspired to jump in and comment because of something they saw on the site. That sort of spontaneous participation is precious. It keeps things fresh and makes HN more interesting. So although, yes, we incur a lot of costs (and pain) from spammers and trolls by being so open, the good things we gain are worth more.

To pick a couple of famous names, I doubt that Alan Kay or Peter Norvig would have bothered with HN if we'd placed up-front demands on them. Countless experts have shown up here over the years to create accounts and share firsthand about what they know. Here's a recent example that sticks in my mind: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22007115. It's particularly common for project creators or article authors to show up and comment on their work. We don't want to do anything to make that less likely.

HN is fortunate in that we're not under pressure to monetize users, squeeze more engagement out of them, or optimize them in any way. The factors that drive companies into corralling their users and eking information out of them don't apply here. The only thing we need to do is have HN be interesting. An open community, assuming it can be persuaded not to destroy itself, is more likely to be interesting.

I suppose because people _will_ get around these restrictions if they set their mind to it - so there may be slightly less spam, but at the cost of everybody's privacy.

Also, I'd suggest required phone/email as the end user seems to be a risk. For example my Twitter account is locked because I never gave a phone. Then a year later it comes out attackers can figure out your number. Not worth it to me.

Also, I can get an SMS over VIOP for cheap for a limited number of days. If I were an attacker the email/phone verification does nothing to stop me.

> ...a healthy skepticism...

The fact that your comment's grandparent, of all comments, is the top one makes me doubt that optimistic outlook.

This makes it seem like you're banning him for supporting his company with a valid argument, and not for creating multiple accounts.

The former would constitute a moderator bias against Google (examples of moderation going the opposite way don't change anything about this particular instance), while the latter would be actual abuse. Although seems like creating multiple accounts doesn't lead to an automatic ban in every single instance, meaning latter is unlikely to be the case here.

Astroturfing would imply that he has a business motive while trying to conceal it as a grassroots comment. Purely from the content of his comment it doesn't seem like that's the case.

> Purely from the content of his comment it doesn't seem like that's the case

You can't judge this by a single comment, since the whole point of this abuse is to make posts that are indistinguishable from grassroots comments, while advancing an agenda. To see the agenda you have to look at patterns across comments. You can begin to see that at https://news.ycombinator.com/posts?id=notamanager, but to really see it you have to look across multiple accounts.

> examples of moderation going the opposite way don't change anything about this particular instance

It changes the general conclusion some readers might otherwise jump to or fear. A single prominent case of moderation is enough to get a lot of sincere users worried about bias, and a counterexample or two is often enough to soothe those worries. I don't want any sincere Googlers on HN (which is basically all of the Googlers on HN) to feel like they're unwelcome or need to change their participation in the site. Anyone who likes both Google and HN should be mad that someone would tarnish the one by poisoning the other.

> Astroturfing would imply that he has a business motive

We can't read motive directly. We can only look at behavior patterns. I look at it as a duck-typing thing: if an account walks and quacks like a corporate propagandist, the name fits, regardless of who they work for or what their job title is.

Edit: unfortunately, internet users are far too quick to perceive other users this way, so the vast majority of the time we have to tell them that the name does not fit—to such an extent that this is in the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and perhaps the worst issue we face as moderators (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...) But still, sometimes it does fit, and dealing with such cases unequivocally is what enables us to make the contrary argument the rest of the time.

> This makes it seem like you're banning him for supporting his company with a valid argument

I'm not sure why it seems that way to you, but I appreciate your perspective and would be happy to hear more. I don't mean to imply that this is an easy issue. It's complex, and slippery to pin down in general. If you put the question as "is it a problem if someone is simply posting valid arguments in favor of their point of view?" it feels like the answer should be no. If you put it as "is it a problem if a specialist shows up with prepared talking points to influence any thread related to their agenda?", it feels like the answer should be yes. But those two things are almost the same, like a Russell conjugation. So how can we draw any line?

The best answer that I know is to look at all the evidence we have (some public, some not) and ask whether the account's behavior is consistent with the value of this site, which is intellectual curiosity. Single-purpose accounts tend not to be, so we don't allow those in general, especially when the single purpose is to advance the interests of some entity. When that pattern occurs repeatedly across multiple accounts, it fits the "does it walk like a duck" test for astroturfing, even if we don't know things like "is it paid" or "who they work for". Those questions aren't usually knowable and aren't intrinsically important. What matters is behavior on the site.

Thanks for the reply. I'm all for cracking down on abuse, especially when it's state-sponsored. And I understand moderator has more context than users.

I just wanted to point out how from an outsider perspective it looks like a bias, especially given that HN always seems to have an overwhelming amount of anti-Google content compared to other media sources (not that Google shouldn't be scrutinized - it should be).

> HN always seems to have an overwhelming amount of anti-Google content

It always feels that way, but nearly always when people say this, it indicates how they feel on a topic (e.g. that in this case you feel pro-Google). People with the opposite feeling are guaranteed to have the opposite perception. In both cases it's a function of (a) the HN dataset is large and has a wide distribution, therefore (b) a lot of content appears here that strikes your feelings negatively, but (c) we remember those instances much more strongly, so (d) they accrue into an overall impression of the site.

I say 'you' but I don't mean you personally. We're all like this. Unfortunately it leads to a community in which people on all sides of every charged issue end up feeling like the community is hostile to them. I don't really know what to do about that other than post about it a lot.

Edit: the same bias affects how people feel about the mods, again in proportion to how intensely they feel about a topic.

Edit 2: I've taken to calling this the notice-dislike bias, mainly because I can't think of a better name for it. There are many other explanations at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Also related is the Hostile Media Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_media_effect.

Oh dang. Kudos. That is such a concise and well explained summary of the polarization in internet communities in general. I don’t think that you can do much about it though. Maybe, write a monthly post on your moderation work on HN that might help people see the opposite side.

At the end, people will have to develop the critical thinking skills required to reason about the way things feel to them.

I imagine you sometimes have reservations about whether to make a moderation decision public, like the one in this thread, but seeing these judgements is always a reminder of how the moderation here is a huge part of what makes this site a special place, regardless of whether I happen to agree with the decision at hand. Thanks for your transparency and good faith.

> This makes it seem like you're banning him for supporting his company with a valid argument,

With an account that exclusively posts in support of said company? While not disclosing that he is getting paid by said company (even if not directly for the posts) ? Isn't that outright illegal in some places?