The thing is, it doesn't even have to be PG/HN doing this. Case in point, look at reddit being astroturfed by every company.

And also, look how good Graphene OS posts do, and now compare that to Stop Killing Games. These both have a similar overlap (unless you work at Google, both are interests/hobbies), yet GOS almost always hits front page (and rightly so), yet SKG failed to, despite being a Stallman-ian topic.

Well I definitely think the site is heavily botted, as it's trivially easy to do so. I was speaking more to moderation.