Please don't post comments insinuating astroturfing or shillage unless you have some more substantive reason for it—in which case you should email us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate. All this is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
It's natural for things to seem this way, but that's because there's enough data on HN to produce seeming patterns of all kinds. Overwhelmingly, it's just users being users. Unfortunately the internet habit of leaping to "shill!" or "PR!" as an explanation for $annoying_view does more damage, because it's more widespread. That's why we ask people to inhibit the reflex.
It's natural for things to seem this way, but that's because there's enough data on HN to produce seeming patterns of all kinds. Overwhelmingly, it's just users being users. Unfortunately the internet habit of leaping to "shill!" or "PR!" as an explanation for $annoying_view does more damage, because it's more widespread. That's why we ask people to inhibit the reflex.
I've posted a ton about this if anyone wants more background: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....