Astroturfing and Sockpuppets
This cluster focuses on suspicions of organized use of fake accounts, bots, shills, and sockpuppets to manipulate discussions, upvotes, and narratives on Hacker News and other online platforms.
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It’s probably an organized group of shills / bots trying to discredit and downplay the concerns so it doesn’t get out of hand. ;)
Same in Facebook and X. Fake name accounts brigading certain topics and comments.
This looks like a sock puppet account astroturfing for duckduckgo. I wouldn't expect them to resort to tactics like that.
sometimes those are farms of people doing multi-account product placement/opinion spreading
Any marketers currently working to manipulate public opinion on HN through the use of sockpuppet accounts, upvote this comment.
Fake accounts and manipulated upvotes.
I suspect (hope) you're being downvoted for being off-topic because what you describe is a serious problem. There are multiple PR/Media orgs that specialize in this now and they're far more advanced than using the same accounts.
What’s with the shill accounts?
are you surprised shills run narrative on this and any other popular open forums and social networking sites?
I'm going to put my tinfoil hat on for a second and say maybe this is due to social media companies cracking down on fake accounts?