The Setup
A month ago I published "I Don't Know If I'm An Expert (And That Might Be the Point)"—an essay arguing that the "expertise performance economy" rewards credential inflation over demonstrated competence. The thesis: when everyone claims "expert," the label becomes meaningless, and we lose the ability to distinguish practitioners who can actually deliver from those who've simply learned to perform certainty.
Nearly a month later, a company account left this comment:
Nice perspective, I totally resonate with this. In a fast-evolving field like AI/ML/automation, labeling oneself "expert" too early often injects false certainty.
At [Company], we try to keep that learning mindset alive: credentials or past success don't stop us from questioning assumptions or revisiting foundations. For us, humility + continuous learning + real-world feedback loops define actual "expertise," not just labels.
Curious to hear from others—in your journeys, how often does the urge to appear "expert" override the need to stay open to learning new paradigms or admitting uncertainty?
Sounds thoughtful, right? Engaged, even. Someone "resonated" with my work.
Except the same account, at the same time, left this on my unrelated technical article about multi-agent AI orchestration:
The exciting framework of the [Protocol]'s concept of multi-agent orchestration and model stacking (as "parallel heads" rather than ensemble averaging) resonates significantly with what we've been exploring.
At [Company], we've tried building modular agent pipelines combining domain-specific models, RAG, and orchestration layers to preserve nuance rather than dilute it, especially in compliance-heavy or context-sensitive enterprise workflows.
Would love to hear from others—in real-world projects, have you observed better robustness or maintainability with such stacked-agent architectures compared to traditional ensemble/averaging approaches?
Same structure. Same company name-drop. Same open-ended question. Different keywords.
They didn't "resonate" with anything. They ran a pattern-matching operation across my articles, extracted technical terminology, and Mad Libs'd their company pitch into both.
The Forensic Breakdown
Let's apply the same analytical lens from the original article. What does this comment actually demonstrate?
The Template:
- Generic compliment referencing article keywords
- Company name + vague claim of similar work
- Open-ended question to farm engagement
What's Missing:
- Any specific insight or challenge to my argument
- Concrete examples from their claimed experience
- Genuine intellectual contribution to the discussion
The Tells:
- Both comments posted "about 2 hours ago" from each other—coordinated, not organic
- Nearly a month after publication—they're running periodic keyword sweeps, not genuinely discovering content
- Identical rhetorical structure across unrelated topics
- Claims of relevant work with zero verifiable specifics
The timing is particularly revealing. This wasn't someone stumbling across my article and feeling moved to respond. This was a scheduled operation: scan dev.to for articles matching target keywords, deploy the template, move on. The month-long delay suggests they're farming older content that's had time to accumulate views—maximizing their visibility extraction.
Think about it from a spam ROI perspective: why waste a comment on a fresh article that might get 50 views when you can target articles that have already proven they have an audience? The delay isn't sloppiness—it's optimization. They're letting the community do the work of surfacing quality content, then attaching themselves to proven performers.
This isn't engagement. It's performance of engagement. The comment looks like substantive discourse the same way "AI Expert" on a LinkedIn bio looks like competence.
Why This Matters Beyond My Bruised Ego
I'm not writing this because a company left a mediocre comment on my article. I'm writing this because the comment is a perfect specimen of the dysfunction I was diagnosing.
My original article argued:
We live in an expertise performance economy. Credentials have become currency, and the treadmill never stops.
The spam comment extends the thesis: we also live in an engagement performance economy. Visibility has become currency. And the treadmill rewards those willing to automate sincerity.
The structural incentives are identical:
| Credential Performance | Engagement Performance |
|---|---|
| Claim "expert" to pass keyword filters | Comment on trending posts to gain visibility |
| Suppress learning edges to perform certainty | Suppress genuine response to perform engagement |
| Devalues "expertise" until it's meaningless | Devalues "community" until it's meaningless |
Both systems reward surface-level pattern matching over substantive contribution. Both erode trust. Both make it harder for practitioners doing real work to be heard above the noise.
The Deeper Problem: Platforms as Advertising Surface
DEV.to is supposed to be a developer community—a place where practitioners share knowledge, debug problems together, and engage in genuine technical discourse.
But company accounts have discovered that "engaging" with content is free advertising. Leave a "thoughtful" comment, get your name in front of that article's entire readership. The comment section becomes a billboard. The author's work becomes a vehicle for someone else's marketing.
This degrades the platform for everyone:
- Authors get notifications that feel like engagement but deliver nothing
- Readers wade through corporate noise to find actual discussion
- The community loses the signal that makes the platform worth visiting
And here's the irony: I volunteer as a DEV Challenge judge. I'm literally helping maintain community quality while company accounts exploit it for visibility.
What Would Demonstrated Engagement Look Like?
Applying my original framework—what would a genuine comment demonstrate?
Repetition/Familiarity: Evidence the commenter has actually grappled with the problem domain, not just skimmed for keywords.
Specific Contribution: A concrete example, counterargument, or extension of the thesis—something that adds to the conversation rather than extracting from it.
Intellectual Honesty: Acknowledgment of uncertainty, limitations, or disagreement. Real practitioners don't speak in frictionless corporate affirmations.
No Extraction: The comment creates value for readers, not just visibility for the commenter.
A genuine response to my expertise article might look like:
"I've struggled with this in hiring—we tried replacing 'expert required' with 'demonstrated experience shipping X' in job descriptions, and it actually changed our applicant pool. Fewer credential-stackers, more practitioners with portfolios. Curious if you've seen similar patterns in consulting."
That's engagement. It has texture. It contributes. It doesn't need to name-drop a company because the insight speaks for itself.
The Meta-Point
My original article argued that "expert" has been devalued by overuse and performance. This incident reveals the same dynamic in community engagement.
When everyone's "resonating" and "curious to hear from others," nobody's actually talking.
The solution isn't cynicism—it's the same reframe I proposed for expertise: replace performance with evidence. Don't tell me you resonate. Show me you read. Don't ask generic questions for algorithm visibility. Contribute something specific that wouldn't exist without your participation.
Platforms could help by flagging coordinated comment patterns, limiting company account visibility, or surfacing engagement quality metrics alongside quantity. But ultimately, communities are built by participants who refuse to treat each other as advertising surface.
Closing Timestamp
I'm not naming the company because this isn't about them specifically—they're just a convenient specimen. Dozens of accounts run the same playbook daily.
But I am timestamping this: the same company, the same template, two articles, same hour. Documented. Preserved.
If you're a developer who's felt vaguely gaslit by "engagement" that didn't feel like engagement—you're not imagining it. The performance economy has colonized community too.
The people doing real work will find each other anyway. We always do.
This is a follow-up to "I Don't Know If I'm An Expert (And That Might Be the Point)". If you want to discuss—actually discuss—I'm in the comments. The genuine ones are easy to spot.
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