Comment by twoodfin

The way hn karma works, you’re incentivized to accumulate a set of bots that meet the threshold for flagging and downvoting. Barring effective anti-bot/brigading measures (some of which I’m sure exist), such a team of bots could manipulate front page content. That’s a valuable capability for a variety of nefarious aims in this space.

A straightforward one would be either subtly or dramatically tilting sentiment here negative against some mid-cap public tech company and profiting from a short position.

(Assuming you think investors care what gets upvoted on hn…)