I do agree with you that we'll all see see a lot more of this nefarious stuff going on and should be on guard.
But did you read the link? Because I'm not convinced by "This is not an instance of what you're talking about." I have never seen a real person behave like that before.
Are either of the following possible?
- Someone on your team purchased ReplyGuy or similar, or is trialing it without your knowledge?
- ReplyGuy or similar is doing this as a test, maybe without informing you?
To answer your questions.
- No, we do not engage in buying any comments, bots, or similar. Any time we've done any sort of external promotion, it is always correctly attributed as such.
- We can't control what other people do but we have no relationship with ReplyGuy or any similar service.
We can theorize all day and go down the rabbit hole of "was this a competitor trying to make us look bad?", "is this HN post stealth marketing for ReplyGuy", etc, but I don't think that would really lead anywhere productive.
I do fully agree that people need to be wary of anything posted on the Internet and take it with a grain of salt and whenever possible verify the facts themselves.