Is the New Yorker utilizing a voting ring of some kind here? This article seems uninteresting to the HN audience, yet it got a lot of upvotes quickly, and comments which would discourage people from clicking through have been swiftly downvoted.
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data.
Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did."
I actually feel like there is a large cross over between software and politics. Look at the foundations of the free software movement. When I was a young idealist this was one of the things that drew me to the profession.