I saw a comment on Reddit that said recently astroturfers have started using a pattern that you can pretty much see everywhere.<p>> [top comment]<p>> > [generic question about what to use/buy?]<p>> > > [link to a paid product that is very loosely related to the original subject]<p>(Sometimes even the [top comment] is left out if the astroturfers have figured how to make that second comment the top comment)<p>And I think that comment chain typically becomes part of a sophisticated upvote ring.
If I see something like that, I flag it. If both the question and the answer come from accounts with no history of stories or comments, it's almost certainly spam. (They're not always newly-created accounts. Some spammers seem to let their accounts sit around for a while before using them.)<p>Fortunately, I haven't seen too much of this on HN yet.<p>(To flag a comment, click on its time stamp [e.g., "10 minutes ago"] and you'll see a "flag" link at the top, next to the "parent" link. If enough people flag a comment, it will get killed.)
I'm sure this happens to some extent, but based on my experience as an employee who interacts with people on social media as part of my role I also think you are underestimating how many people legitimately ask questions on Reddit / Hacker News / Twitter etc. I'm sure that there are some bad actors out there that post a question as well as the answer and that use an upvote ring to boost their comments for visibility, but there are also employees that just respond to legitimate comments that they see on the internet.<p>As part of my role for Amazon Web Services I frequently respond to comments on platforms like Reddit, Twitter, and Hacker News. When I see someone asking a question about an AWS service, saying something inaccurate about AWS, or who seems like they could legitimately benefit from some knowledge I can share with them then I'll post a reply. You can check through my comment history if you are interested, but here is a recent example of such an interaction: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19282477" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19282477</a><p>There are quite a few people out there like me who monitor relevant discussions and interact with people on social media websites as part of their job role. I would never "astroturf", not only because its unethical, but also because there is plenty of legitimate and relevant discussion that I can contribute to when needed without needing to resort to creating artificial questions.
I think its very likely any social-engagement web space which has a low barrier to entry winds up being astroturfed. All of them.<p>The question would be how high (at any given point in time) the barrier to entry has to be.