Is he, really? Most of his blog posts are little more than opportunistic, buttressing commentary on someone else's blog post or article, often with a bit of AI apologia sprinkled in (for example, marginalizing people as paranoid for not taking AI companies at their word that they aren't aggressively scraping websites in violation of robots.txt, or exfiltrating user data in AI-enbaled apps).
EDIT: and why must he link to his blog so often in his comments? How is that not SEO/engagement farming? BTW dang, I wasn't insinuating the mods were in league with him or anything, just that, IMO, he's long past the point at which good faith should no longer be assumed.
I think when a moderator keeps intervening like this it really does mean that there's something wrong here. I think people would be less mad if you just went ahead and said that you have some kind of special arrangement here with this influencer and post publicly that you like them constantly spamming the site and letting their fans flood the place with deflection and appeals for donations to them. Even YouTube had to add a sponsored post disclaimer.
There's no special arrangement. The only issue is clarifying what content is welcome vs. unwelcome on HN. simonw's content is obviously welcome, and this ought to be obvious.
> I think people would be less mad
People aren't mad about this. The vast majority of this community values simonw's contributions, which are well within the sweet spot for material on HN. That's why his material gets upvoted, as minimaxir (no friend of astroturfers) has pointed out elsewhere in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46451969.
(And yes, there I go again linking to something I've written from a comment. It's entirely relevant to the point I am making here. That's why I have a blog - so I can put useful information in one place.)
I'll also note that I don't ever share links to my link blog posts on Hacker News myself - I don't think they're the right format for a HN post. I can't help if other people share them here: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=simonwillison.net
Are you really going to insult my and others' intelligence like this? Directly or indirectly, your motivation is money. You already offer monthly subscriptions to your blog, and you're clearly trying to build a monetizable brand for yourself as a leading authority on AI, especially as it pertains to software development.
That's why I haven't got a job: I enjoy the freedom of working for myself, and I have enough of a financial runway from a previous startup acquisition that I can afford to do my own thing for a few more years.
At some point I'm going to need to get back to earning more than I spend.
But given the volume of LLM slop, it was kind of obvious and known that even the moderators now have "favourites" over guidelines.
> Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity. [0]
The blog itself is clearly used as promotion all the time when the original source(s) are buried deep in the post and almost all of the links link back to his own posts.
This is now a first on HN and a new low for moderators and as admitted have regular promotional favourites on the top of HN.
The operative word there is "primarily". Simon comments on a variety of topics and has far more interactions that don't link to his blog than do.
Simon's posts are not engagement farming by any definition of the term. He posts good content frequently which is then upvoted by the Hacker News community, which should be the ideal for a Hacker News contributor.
Except that the "content" that reaches the top is always about AI / LLMs and nothing else and it is "all the time". Any opportunity to comment, he will link back to his own blog.
He even reposted the same link (which is about AI) with one of his posts when the upvotes fell off and until the second one reached the top, with the intention of promoting his own blog.
Let me simply prove my point to you on how predictable this spam is.
He will do a blog post this month about this paper [0] with an expert analysis by either someone else (or even an LLM) with the primary intention of the blog being used for self promotion with at least one link back to his own blog.
> ...which is then upvoted by the Hacker News community
You don't know that. But what we do know is that even the moderators now have "favourites". Anyone else would be shot down for promotional spam.
"He even reposted the same link (which is about AI) with one of his posts when the upvotes fell off"
Where did I do that?
> He will do a blog post this month about this paper [0]
That paper you linked to is a perfect example of where my approach can add value!
Did you read it? Do you understand what it saying? It is dense.
I would love to read an evaluation of that paper by someone who can rephrase the core ideas and conversations into a couple of paragraphs that help me understand it, and help me figure out if I should invest further effort in learning more.
I have a whole tag on my blog for that kind of content called paper-review: https://simonwillison.net/tags/paper-review/ - it's my version of the TikTok meme "I read X so you don't have to".
Honestly, your problem doesn't seem to be with me so much as it seems to be with the concept of blogging in general.
Way to respond to someone complaining that you'll find any excuse to link to your blog. Why do you think this is respectful? Someone wrote a lot about you specifically and this behavior https://www.jwz.org/blog/2002/11/engineering-pornography/
You've posted over 40 replies hounding this one user whom you seem to be fixated on. We've already asked you to stop (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44726957) but you've continued:
This is obviously an abuse of HN, regardless of who you're being aggressive towards. We ban accounts that keep doing this. If you keep doing it, we will ban you, so no more of this please.
I had to paste that into a separate browser window (jwz blocks Hacker News referral traffic) and I cannot figure out how that story is relevant to this conversation. Did you share the right link?
I appreciate his work for being more informative and organized than average AI-related content. Without his blogging, it would be a struggle to navigate the bombastic and narcissistic Twitter/Reddit posts for AI updates. The barrier to entry for AI reporting is so low that you just need to give a bit more care to be distinguished, and he is getting the deserved attention for doing exactly that in a systematical and disciplined manner. (I do believe many on HN are more than capable but not interested in doing the same.) Personally, I sometimes find his posts more congratulatory or trivial than I like, but I have learned to take what I want and ignore what I don’t.
