That should merit a ban for the AAN OP no? Other company accounts too?
How do you know anyone related to the project is behind this?
You are right, this would make a great setup to damage your competition..
What if the ANN thread is self-moderated by the OP? If the OP is not actively pruning shitposts after, say, 24 hours, then it seems reasonable to conclude this is not a case of a competitor attempting to tar the competition.
EDIT - for example, here is a rather egregious violator:
the Roomdao ANN thread.This is a self-moderated thread that is seeing a new post every 2-3 minutes on average, and virtually none of those 3400+ posts is worth a crap. Thus, we can safely conclude that this is not a competitor trying to frame Roomdao for incentivizing posting to its ANN.
I get that nuking the thread absent any solid proof might still be seen as drastic, so how about temporarily locking it for, say, 7 days, or until the OP cleans up all the spammy posts? If the goal of paid bumping is to keep a thread on the first page then locking the thread, even temporarily, will ensure it falls far, far behind. I mean, just a 6 hour delay takes you back 5-6 pages!