>Its rather disingenuous of you to think people are claiming racism violence and child pornography here

krapp did that in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19655230. You might need to turn showdead on in your profile to see it.

Ah - yea that's just plain silly right there. And frustrating bc it throws the meta discussion out the window

That interview is with a different son (Daniel, not Aaron).

This interview contains some of the more interesting observations I've heard on this much-discussed topic. e.g. his analogy between online tribes and teenage gangs.

"Anchoring is a powerful psychological weapon": http://upvotes.club/buy/hacker-news-comment/

"Why so expensive compared to Reddit": http://upvotes.club/buying-hacker-news-growthhackers-upvotes...

Reddit's easier to game because the user's downvotes & upvotes received are much more powerful in their ranking there.

HN's also more expensive because there is less demand.

More expensive because there is less demand? Doesn't that usually go the other way?

If there is less demand then there are most likely fewer "quality" accounts that have been set up for HN which in turn, makes the account more valuable.

I imagine there's less supply as well.

Am I mistaken in thinking that they outsource to other people? (I'm having trouble loading their website due to the load.)

Also, doesn't HN rank upvotes based on karma and account age? You can't downvote until reaching 500(?) and having your account for a certain duration of time.

> Also, doesn't HN rank upvotes based on karma and account age? You can't downvote until reaching 500(?) and having your account for a certain duration of time.

That sounds about right.

There seem to be some additional rules, too. For instance, there are certain comments I don't see a downvote button for, and I have no clue why.

Comments older than a day can't be downvoted.

I can create 100 accounts for Reddit and they'll be used 100x/month, or I can create 100 accounts for HN and they'll be used twice/month. Both take the same amount of time to create. Which should be more expensive?

Wouldn't it rather depend on the value to the buyer? I mean as a general rule of operating businesses you try to pay production costs for things you need and price for customer value for things you sell?

Well, both matter - it's a supply/demand curve. The seller here seems to be assuming that the demand is relatively inelastic, and the opportunity cost of the seller's time (which is apparently finite) needs to be factored in.

So in essence what you have is a seller determining which type of the two accounts to make. He will not be able to re-use the HN accounts as much, and therefore he makes less per unit of time from them, and must charge more to make them worth his time.