[wfjackson]

According to this post, they do.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8620539

It would be nice to have that in a disclaimer in the posts discussing Google or in the HN profile page though.

[dang]

wfjackson and ckelvin are fakes, replying to and upvoting each other in order to astroturf this thread. This is the latest incarnation of a pro-Microsoft astroturfing campaign that has plagued this site for years, using these two accounts:

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=recoiledsnake

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=cooldeal

... and many dozens of others.

This person (or persons) is an accomplished if not professional pro-Microsoft astroturfer whose "contributions" to Hacker News consist of shilling for Microsoft, slagging Microsoft competitors, and covering their tracks. At one point they even created fake female identities to make it look like when we banned them, we were banning women (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7079380).

We ban any account that evidence suggests is part of this campaign or anything similar. It is a bad-faith abuse of this site that has cost us many hours of work that would otherwise have been poured into improving HN, so they steal from this community in addition to violating it.

It's especially galling to see them personally attack sincere users who don't hide their affiliations and don't snake around replying to themselves.

[tptacek]

I wrote something longer and more boring, but managed through several rounds of edits to condense it:

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

[tptacek]

Sounds awesome. Let's do that for everyone. We can put my NSA affiliation in there too.

In the history of this site nobody has ever made themselves look smarter or been more persuasive by accusing another HN commenter of being a shill.

[vdaniuk]

Conflict of interest is very real and full disclosure should be a norm in the community powered media with so much influence on tech industry.