> We want people to post things because they’re interesting, not just because they’re promoting content.<p>When people say "algorithms gone haywire" that generally implies a machine learning or adaptive algorithm of some sort, this sounds like a hard coded "if X amount of submissions from the same URL, ban" type of thing. That's not even really a computer issue, that's just the way a human decided to make the system work.<p>Same is true with humans and human processes. If one human sets the policy for another, be it a legislative body setting policy for an executive branch, a managerial body setting policy for a customer service representative, etc, is it the customer service representative's fault that the policy is that way and they have to do something they know isn't logical or great in the situation? No.<p>When you are herding sheep or in this case herding spam bots and scammers mixed in with probably 10-20% legitimate users, you have to make some tough calls to try to optimize the content on the site to make it usable for real people.