Given the influence of HN in the tech community, I have to believe that big players (e.g., Microsoft, Google, etc) spend at least some amount of money on PR to sway public opinion, or, at a minimum, control the damage of negative stories. But I’ve rarely seen obvious examples. Am I just blind to it, or do the moderators really succeed in controlling it?
I honestly don't think this happens, at least at the level of a place like HN. It's just too small. Instead I believe they spend money trying to deal with TechCrunch and going to the media outlets directly, to control the story, not the comments.
On the other hand, a lot of good employees work for those companies and read things here. They are smart people who will occasionally fight for their company or explain why something happened, or how something isn't true, usually in a very technical way. But I don't think any of these people are paid PR people.
While there are some things that come up here maybe a few hours or days before the mainstream press gets to it (usually posted from a smaller press outlet), I've never seen an HN thread quoted or referenced here in the mainstream media. If you've seen one, I'd love to see it.
Also, just because sometimes there are some mainstream stories here (for example, a lot of WSJ, NYT, WaPo is posted here) doesn't mean that all stories posted here are mainstream. Most aren't.
Have you ever seen a post regarding gitlab? Their CEO and team is pretty fanatical about responding to feedback and linking to tickets they've created, or issues they've addressed, on their website.
Additionally, I've seen several instances of engineers / product folks / etc., reaching out when someone has a difficult experience or lacks understanding for why things played out the way they did.
Now, that doesn't mean that hacker news is an official customer support channel, nor does it mean that every person that has a situation will garner enough HN support for it to matter...but, it does happen.
Thank you for sharing this! We think that Hacker News community is really important and try to engage as much as possible.
Since one of our core values is transparency, we love to share our open issues, blog posts and links to different parts of our handbook[1].
This helps members of our community get more context on certain topics and allows them to continue the discussion in the right place. Furthermore, when our community knows where to express their feedback, we can use it to improve GitLab.
The thing about astroturfing is that, for every person being paid to promote something, you have dozens of fools parotting the corporate message for free. So, even if there were not any astroturfers on HN, the effects of their work would still affect opinion here.
There was a discussion a few weeks ago on whether Guttenberg was end of WordPress or a new start that prompted Matt Mullenweg to comment on a few threads.
Most HN people to their credit do seem to state if they are employed there but it would be difficult to differentiate between a fan and an astroturfer.
Probably more difficult to moderate would be employees or PR downvoting a critical comment rather than actually replying.
I believe there is an algorithm that picks up on crowd voting/downvoting.
On the other hand, a lot of good employees work for those companies and read things here. They are smart people who will occasionally fight for their company or explain why something happened, or how something isn't true, usually in a very technical way. But I don't think any of these people are paid PR people.