Ask HN: Are links and posts to HN being stolen?

4 points by joergrech 3 years ago | 10 comments

Is it possible that other accounts steal submitted links or posts?

I just had this experience with my paydevs account: * On 2022-10-29T12:43:45 I postet https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33383563 on my paydevs account, which does not show up in the stream and HN search * On hour later, on 2022-10-29T13:43:02 the user https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=pabs3 published the same link with a different title: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33383972

Is this normal on HackerNews?

dang 3 years ago |

I looked at the data and as far as I can tell it was just a coincidence that the other user submitted the same link.

We banned your paydevs account though - it's against HN's rules to use the site primarily for promotion (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), and that account was not only doing that, it crossed the line into what the community here considers spamming. That's why your submission of the link was killed.

joergrech 3 years ago | |

Thanks for the feedback - that explains the first part, although I'm not sure why asking questions every few days on a topic is promotion or spamming (other accounts post several links per hours).

However, just as I mentioned in a deleted thread started by Tomte, that "somebody else got lucky" would be a very very big coincidence - the project is roughly 3 months old and wasn't mentioned recently. That someone decides - exactly at the same time - to share the link is very strange.

dang 3 years ago | | |

All of your posts with that account were about one thing, which happens to be the same thing your company is selling. That's using questions as a promotional device, not asking questions out of intellectual curiosity. This was obvious enough that users emailed to complain about it.

As for the other submission, I didn't find the slightest indication that the submitter did anything wrong. If you posted your URL to another site, perhaps they saw it there and thought HN might find it interesting? Alternatively, perhaps they had 'showdead' turned on in their profile, saw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33383563 and thought it might do better with a different title? There are lots of ways that post could have been made legitimately.

It's also not clear what the alternative hypothesis is - what are they supposed to have done that wasn't legitimate? I looked at a bunch of their submissions and none of the links had been previously submitted to HN, so this isn't happening routinely.

beardyw 3 years ago |

I suggest you ask at hn@ycombinator.com

It does seem odd.

Tomte 3 years ago |

Stories on the web aren't your personal property that only you are allowed to submit. Get over it.

joergrech 3 years ago | |

The problem is not that someone postet the link - the problem is that the original link/post was hidden and exactly 1 hour later someone else postet it.

Tomte 3 years ago | | |

That's strange. You can write to hn@ycombinator.com and ask why your submission is [dead]. Maybe it got caught in some spam filter, was unblocked and then somebody else got lucky.