There seems to be a trend where anything negative against a major company (most often microsoft, apple and google) is flagged rather quickly. My guess is that they realise how important HN is for public perception by tech people and run PR teams here.
The only major trend I see is the perennial one of drawing conclusions about trends. People base this on the limited sample of what they happen to notice and dislike and remember. Such 'trends' are in the eye of the beholder. This becomes obvious when you see how many comments like this get posted and how contradictory they are.
For example, HN has a plethora of stories about abuses at and by major corps and they often stay on the front page. Someone with a more pro-business bias would look at the same front pages as you and see the opposite 'major trend'. In fact I'm sure someone is, right now.
As for shadowy brigades of astroturfers behind story flagging, that is so classic a cognitive bias that we just ask people not to go there. The users who flag stories you favor aren't shills—they're normal users like everyone else, who simply have different views about what belongs on HN. Exceptions to that exist, but they're so rare as to have zero explanatory power. If you want more info about this, I've posted countlessly about it: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=true&page=0&dateR....
If an Uber executive or PR person were particularly unscrupulous (would that surprise anyone at all?), another method would be to say something really insensitive in a thread like this and start a flame war to trigger HN's ranking algorithm. Imagine how easy that would be... a somewhat carefully disguised comment with the sentiment of "depression is just weakness, suck it up!" would rightfully send this thread into a frenzy of angry commentary and downvoting.
That theory doesn't fit the data. The overwhelming majority of flags are by users who vote and comment indistinguishably from everybody else. If they're bots, somebody should tell OpenAI.
At the end of the day, OpenAI is only providing guesses, and I don't think it's unreasonable to speculate that there could be bots that are able to simulate voting and commenting indistinguishably from other users.
I'm not saying it figures in any specific thread or context, just that it's possible that bot capabilities may outstrip HN's ability to detect them.
Given that a systematic effort by a PR company with sufficient "organic" looking users and automation could probably eventually "win" any online discussion / voting mechanism, this should be illegal outright.
You may only discuss as a private person, stating your own opinion, OR disclose which company/government organization you represent.
Well, NOW you've done it. Now they're immorally bound to do what you suggest, or basically vanish in a puff of logic ;) you've told Uber something it can't do because it would be cheating and would win!
Without a doubt. I have had insightful, but critical comments with a dozen karma suddenly downvoted into oblivion. Really lowered my expextations of having meaningful dialouge on HN.
I have experienced that frequently. And I think it is easily explained by normal human behaviors.
People see comments that they don't like -> They send the link to their group of friends -> Their friends who share the same sentiment downvotes you in quick successions.
