[abc-xyz]

How else would you explain the rank 2 thread with 100+ upvotes, no flamebait comments (at the time) and only 1 hour old disappearing off the site (I checked 5+ pages)? All threads critical of China follow this pattern, and I highly doubt it’s dang personally removing them (because he sometimes reinstate them).

[dang]

Please read and follow the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. They ask you not to post insinuations about astroturfing, foreign agents, and the like. If you don't have any evidence, the odds are overwhelming that this is internet users indulging in fantasy stories about how their enemies are sinisterly manipulating everything. That is an extremely low-quality class of internet comment—in fact, it's probably tied for last place. If you're trying to have an internet forum that doesn't go down the toilet—and we are—you have to minimize this kind of thing. Hence the rule.

In reality, the world is complicated, the community is divided, and the sinister enemies are overwhelmingly just normal community members who happen to have very different backgrounds and views than you do. People who want to participate in HN discussion need to be able to absorb and tolerate that fact, not try to erase it with cheap and lazy accusations, which is what the vast majority of these comments are. Unbelievably cheap and lazy, in fact.

I absolutely don't mean to pick on you personally—this is a system-wide problem and it's getting worse.

Also, in case anyone is wondering "what about real manipulation? doesn't that exist?" — that is addressed in the guidelines as well: if you're worried about it and think you might be seeing it on HN, email [e-mail] so we can investigate. We always look into it. It may take us a while to reply, but we will.

There was a long discussion about this the other day if anyone wants more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25597879.