Search engines are more manipulative than that, for a start, large players (govts & global businesses) can game search engines which probably explains your comment describing search engines. You cant run that many sock puppets on hacker news without drawing attention unless you just do a MITM to create a fake hacker news. In that instance the original hackernews wouldnt miss you and the people doing the MITM would be able to psychologically manipulate you all they like, all it needs is someone not too hot on computer security and include an OS and device which isnt that secure over and above what a court order couldnt solicit, like root certs.