The site is literally called Hacker News and it was built from the start to be a community of current/potential startup founders.
(And no, self upvoting/ringvoting isn’t ok on HN and probably hasn’t been on Reddit for 17.5 of the past 18 years either. We’re talking about bootstrapping a totally new site in 2005, nothing more.)
I've addressed these questions in several other comments in the thread. To repeat: no laws/rules of any kind were broken. Nobody was harmed. Nobody who was a user of the site in those days has complained of feeling deceived. It's a funny, playful thing to do with zero harm done. I like funny, playful things.
The only people who care about this are people who like to finger-wag. Knock yourself out if that's what you like to do.
No, it’s entirely different. You’re picking things that are clearly fraudulent and asserting an equivalency, without basis or examination.
Reddit’s practice was a simulation of activity to see what kind of activity was engaging. Nobody was defrauded or harmed and no legal or moral rules were breached.
This comment commits the beg-the-question fallacy of assuming the conclusion (fraud/moral breach) in its argumentation.
I understand that people have a need to believe that behind every fortune lies a great crime [1], but this is not the smoking gun people are looking for.
(And no, self upvoting/ringvoting isn’t ok on HN and probably hasn’t been on Reddit for 17.5 of the past 18 years either. We’re talking about bootstrapping a totally new site in 2005, nothing more.)