Fair point. I've been a long-time HN reader but never made an account before. After working hard building the app, I was excited to create my first post to share it, and mentioned to my friends I had posted it to HN. Evidently a few of them decided to create accounts to show support. If this was any kind of breach of HN etiquette, my sincere apologies -- that certainly was not the intent.
Both the site guidelines and the FAQ explain that this is not allowed here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
The HN community considers it spamming and guards its integrity rather zealously.
Making an account to post something and coincidentally having friends who on their own decided to make accounts to comment is against the rules?
>Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.
Posting the same site twice in 2 weeks seems more than "occasional", and in my opinion, crosses the line from "look what I made" to self promotion.
The comment that was being replied to didn't say that he'd posted more than once. The one to which OP was replying said that the article had been posted earlier, but not by whom.
It's not coincidentally.
Have you any proof? By the same justification, I could claim that you're a competitor, and trying to make things difficult for OP. Say you're not? Well, you are.