Yes, I am perplexed by this. I have noted an insane number of bots commenting positively on Donald Trump's twitter account. It's obvious they're bots because of the username, lack of other activity, spelling and grammatical mistakes (due to phrases being directly translated from Russian).
P.S. Whenever I mention the above on here, I am subject to a barrage of down votes. Almost as if bots are searching HN comments and trying to down vote anything that is negative towards Trump. If this gets down voted heavily, it'll confirm my suspicions yet again...
Downvoted already. On further reflection, I think it must be the last category since it would be a challenge for a Russian [bot] account to get the karma to be able to downvote.
Did you ever consider people don't agree with your opinion? I am anti Trump but not everybody is. Also there are bots on all sides of the political spectrum as evidenced by the article you are commenting on which dealt with an account pumping Bernie.
Yes, I have considered that, however the downvote patterns on those topics are unusual for HN. I've been here a few years, and know when something feels a bit off. Also, I'm not saying something that is wildly incorrect - just go on Twitter onto DT's account - what I'm reporting is self-evident. Do you disagree?
Edit: also, if I don't mention DT's name, but refer to him in other more cryptic ways, I (and other HN users I know) get upvoted. Basically if you mention his name, it seems to get flagged up to bots/users to investigate...
It's a well-reasoned respectful comment though. It has been the HN way that downvoting is really to punish overtly bad comments and a lack of upvoting boring comments.
It's also the HN way to downvote comments which include complaints about the comment being downvoted though [more so if they speculate the comment is being downvoted due to bots and followup with a request for moderator intervention]. Suspect that's the wider issue here.
More generally, political comments are bound to attract some downvotes from people who either support the other side or don't like politics on HN, although you'd normally expect more upvotes on a comment which is on-topic, only tangentially related to the figure's politics and well-reasoned and civil
For me this is it. Now I generally don't downvote unless I see the same person going on and on. But, regardless of how I feel about a particular issue, I just don't think it belongs on HN. I come here to get away from all of that. There are plenty of other places to go if I'm interested in discussing politics. I come hear to talk about tech and science.
I'm not perfect and I'm sure if you trawl through my comment history you can find contradictory examples, but, I hope anyway, they are few and far between and limited to one or two at most in the same story.
My rule of being a good HN user is don't complain about downvotes, don't talk too much, if at all, about politics and read and reread my comment before I hit reply. Am I really making a contribution? If not, hit the back button!
P.S. Whenever I mention the above on here, I am subject to a barrage of down votes. Almost as if bots are searching HN comments and trying to down vote anything that is negative towards Trump. If this gets down voted heavily, it'll confirm my suspicions yet again...