Comment by dang

In this case it's easy to point to a specific guideline:

"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm sorry that I didn't understand that you were joking. The problem, though, is, that many other readers won't understand that either and some will react by getting triggered (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42711424 and the replies there), so in the end it sadly doesn't make much difference.

We have to be proactive (not to say paranoid) about this issue because it's one of the worst dynamics that ruins threads. Lots of past explanations here if anyone wants more: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

As for upvoting, I wish you were right about that—it would be so much less work—but alas, the voting system alone isn't sufficient for this place to survive. (Past explanations about that if anyone cares: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...)