We detached this subthread from <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10590512" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10590512</a> and marked it off-topic.<p>You&#x27;re not allowed to accuse other users of astroturfing or shilling without evidence. Having an opposing view doesn&#x27;t count as evidence. If you have sincere suspicion that someone is astroturfing, you&#x27;re asked to email hn@ycombinator.com. We take such emails seriously, look at the data, and if we find evidence, we act on it. I&#x27;ve explained all this dozens of  times:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?sort=byPopularity&amp;prefix=true&amp;page=0&amp;dateRange=all&amp;type=comment&amp;query=by:dang%20astroturf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?sort=byPopularity&amp;prefix=true&amp;page=0...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?sort=byPopularity&amp;prefix=true&amp;page=0&amp;dateRange=all&amp;type=comment&amp;query=by:dang%20shill" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?sort=byPopularity&amp;prefix=true&amp;page=0...</a><p>If you poke around HN search you&#x27;ll find cases where we banned people for abusing the site this way, but the overwhelming majority of accusations are just users slinging dirt at users who happen to disagree with them, and we&#x27;re adamant about that not becoming more of a thing here.