Hacker News Reader

I think that to generate activity and make the post go viral

Go viral where? Hacker News doesn't feed into any other social media systems.

On HN itself. More activity makes a post look like more people are interested in it. The algorithm that chooses what appears on the front page does take notice of the number of comments.

Mind you, I'm not claiming that's what's actually going on. But that could be the intent.

Sure but if there are more comments than upvotes it triggers the flamewar detector and the thread gets weighted down. This forum interprets virality as damage and routes around it.

Then again I suppose the bots could also be upvoting, but I would assume that would be detectable to the voting ring detectors.

I don't know. Hacker News is supposed to be a place where human beings enjoy each other's company and conversation about common interests and intellectual pursuits but it seems like a lot of people here want to optimize the humanity out entirely.

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