Comment by legrande

> Hacker News has software to detect vote manipulation (ie. asking friends to upvote)

Putting on my conspiracy robe, I imagine it's not just about 'friends upvoting friends', but the relative ease at which new accounts are created (No SMS one-time-tokens, not even email required to register etc); and then using those accounts to artificially inflate certain stories.

If there are accounts being created for the purposes of artificially inflating stories, and their 'score value' then I would hope it's about interesting content, and not some politically tainted fluff piece used to persuade and misinform/dis-inform.

Largely HN seems to work in favor of interesting content, and I agree with this article when it says: "If you get past the voting ring detector, you won’t get past the readers."

I mean, if you somehow developed a voting ring, you would have to jump even more hoops to get that article/link the respect it deserves. And the HN audience are very articulate in pointing out flaws in services/articles/sites in general.