I think it's fundamentally different in HN, everyone sees the same posts/comments (Barring settings / mod privileges), but in X everyone can get a slightly tailored feed

I'm sure there's coordinated efforts to up/downvote content on HN. The political articles are way up and certain reasonable comments seem to be unreasonably downvoted. It seems like it's ramped up since the election. Either that or HN is becoming a natural echo chamber, I'm not quite sure.

If people don't already know, the internet is easily manipulated and people tend to get ideas and reassurances of ideas based on what their group's opinions are, and those opinions are manipulated. It's easy to create multiple accounts, easy to change IP addresses, easy to bot comments; anyone can do it and it's easy to automate.

The earliest example I can recall was manipulating the Amazon ratings system, now it's everywhere.

"The Algorithm" on most social media platforms to which people apply that term is, crucially, personalized, and (usually) heavily driven by engagement metrics. That's what makes them dangerous and shitty, not just having a voting system or sorting by latest post ("technically an algorithm!" as some posters will helpfully point out in these kinds of discussions)

Is it that transparent? I did not know about the vast majority of the items on this list until I encountered it: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented

Certainly more transparent than some black box machine learning monstrosity.

I'd like HN to indicate somewhere on the page when mods override flags or make other moderation decisions.

They won't because it would reveal moderation biases and trends.

on hn the algorithm boosts/hides posts and comments based on the popularity of the user account that upvoted/downvoted? i thought all accounts had the same voting weight.

You even even downvote on HN until you pass some bar