[zelphirkalt]

I have a suspicion here on HN. When criticizing big tech, especially Google and FB, at a certain time of the day a specific cohort comes online and downvotes. Suspiciously, that is a time when one could conclude, that now people in the US start working or come online. Either fanboys, employees or an organized group of users trying to silence big tech criticism.

I have no proof of course and it might be coincidence, or just difference of mindset between US citizens and Europe citizens. It happened a few times already and to me looks sus.

But if they actually read and not just ctrl+f <company name>, then of course not writing the company name, but hinting at it in an obvious way is no more helpful either.

[throwa356262]

I have seen this happening multiple times, some to fairly reasonable comments with a just tiny negative tone.

There is also flagging abuse which effectively kills the comment /post.

[simpss]

I know for a fact at least 1 bigger US company has a bot in slack that brings up any mentions of $companyname on hackernews...

[sergiotapia]

It's been my experience that hn and reddit have a very high overlap in audience these days. The jerrybreakseverything crowd. Anything anti-tesla, anti-grok, is applauded.

[ImPostingOnHN]

Yeah, I agree with GP, pretty much anything that isn't effusively praising tesla or elmu etc will tend to get reflexively downvoted.