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Also off-topic: Why are 6 of the 8 'comments' on that page autocomments merely saying that it's a top story on HN? That seems a bit excessive.

edit: Ah, downvoted within seconds. This is a Displeasing Question apparently. Sorry for whyever that is. But I'm curious. ..and won't be bullied into deleting the question.

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Please don't break the site guidelines by going on about downvotes. As they say, it never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

An additional consideration is that corrective upvotes usually come along after awhile, rendering the complaint not only boring but factually inaccurate.

Upvoted you, I asked myself the same question. Looks like a bot that annoys bloggers by notifying them that their writing is trending on various aggregators.

The "pingbacks" are common on WordPress blog using WordPress comments. As you mentioned they simply appear when another website provides a backlink.

This is default behavior, but most disable it.

These comments link back to blogs that have links to "top stories on HN", linking directly to the stories.

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