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Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

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Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#101

Post by rerdavies »

BalinKing wrote: post #7

I furthermore wish that "posting an LLM-generated comment (i.e. and passing it off as your own)" was worthy of an instant ban, because I see this sort of behavior from non-green accounts as well. EDIT: I meant (but totally forgot) to qualify that my "proposal" would only apply when the LLM-ness is self-obvious—idk, make up a "reasonable person" standard or something. Presumably, the moderators would err on the side o…

I think all submissions to HN should be submitted via snail-mail, and must be handwritten. That would solve the problem.

/heavy sarcasm

That being said, my mother used to insist on hand-written cover letters from job applicants. Her rationale: it takes effort, so it weeds out all the applications from people who are just randomly spraying out applications for jobs they are not qualified for.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#102

Post by dextrous »

delichon wrote: post #28

There is an epistemic silver lining. This is in fact a Red Queen's race that cannot be won. So in the end the only solution is to evaluate the text on its own merits without reference to the writer's status, because that status can no longer be reliably detected. For a public feed like this one, the only alternative is to ignore it. The fire hose of data will inevitably become ever more fecal. We can only walk away f…

One way that I could imagine a human-only HN could evolve in the coming AI wasteland: motivated individuals join small local groups and are validated face-to-face at meet-ups. Local trusted leads gatekeep their chapter’s posts, and this scalable moderation works up the tree. Bad leaves get culled out reasonably fast, maybe there’s some controls at the top level that let you see more content “lower down the tree” if you’re ok with lower SNR. Latency to get a post widely distributed grows but I don’t see that as a massive problem.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#103

Post by vunderba »

castral wrote: post #16

I don't understand how this is supposed to solve anything, and I've seen it suggested as a solution multiple times. If you restrict comments to older accounts, all it's going to do is make the bot creators speculatively open and proactively age accounts for future use.

This already happens now. Go look through a few of the "Show HN" authors - you'll inevitably see around several accounts that are 50-100 days old with a karma of 1 to avoid a green label.

The OP is talking about posts, not comments. The simplest solution might be to prevent someone from posting a "Show HN" until they’ve earned twenty-five or fifty karma, to demonstrate that they’ve been actively participating on Hacker News rather than using it solely to promote themselves.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#104

Post by bakugo »

wormpilled wrote: post #58
dang wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just new ones for now. I don't want to make HN harder for legit new users, but I do think a bit of community participation is reasonable before posting a Show HN, so it isn't just a box on some "how to promote your project" checklist.

It's really hurting the brand. I can't remember the last time I bothered to even check that index. I used to check it all the time.

/newest is pretty grim, too. Go there and click any link, and odds are you won't even need to read the contents to know it's AI generated, because you'll immediately be met by one of:

- A landing page that looks exactly like every single AI generated landing page ever, I don't even need to describe it, you already know what it looks like

- An article or blog post headered by an image with the Gemini logo in the corner

- A Github repository with CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md and/or 50 large commits made in the span of a day

I'd estimate that more than half of new submissions now fall into one of the above categories.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#105

Post by jacquesm »

BalinKing wrote: post #7

I furthermore wish that "posting an LLM-generated comment (i.e. and passing it off as your own)" was worthy of an instant ban, because I see this sort of behavior from non-green accounts as well. EDIT: I meant (but totally forgot) to qualify that my "proposal" would only apply when the LLM-ness is self-obvious—idk, make up a "reasonable person" standard or something. Presumably, the moderators would err on the side o…

For now there is already a pretty effective mechanism in place, downvote and/or flag those comments that you think are across the line in that sense.

But in principle I agree with you, the rule for me is 'if it wasn't worth your time to write then it certainly isn't worth 1000x times other people's time to read'.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#106

Post by techsystems »

dang wrote: post #47
Oras wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all accounts or just new ones?

Just new ones for now. I don't want to make HN harder for legit new users, but I do think a bit of community participation is reasonable before posting a Show HN, so it isn't just a box on some "how to promote your project" checklist.

How new is new?

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#107

Post by delichon »

saulpw wrote: post #36
delichon wrote: post #28

There is an epistemic silver lining. This is in fact a Red Queen's race that cannot be won. So in the end the only solution is to evaluate the text on its own merits without reference to the writer's status, because that status can no longer be reliably detected. For a public feed like this one, the only alternative is to ignore it. The fire hose of data will inevitably become ever more fecal. We can only walk away f…

"cannot be won" "only solution" "only alternative". sorry, no, that's too black and white. There are other solutions, even if they will only work for a couple of days/months/years.

Don't tell anyone, but I am secretly in charge and open to suggestions. Spill.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#108

Post by ryandrake »

tayo42 wrote: post #83
ryandrake wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In every single article's comments now, there's always someone coming out of the woodwork to post "This article is written by LLM." These comments are about as useless as "The website's color scheme is annoying" and "The website breaks the [back button | scrollbar]." (which, by the way, are not allowed per the HN guidelines[1]) If anything should be banned, it's low-effort "This is AI" commentary. It adds absolute ze…

I was thinking he same thing but didn't want to post my complaint about other commenters becasue I think that's against the rules too?

I generally don't but I think it's defacto-allowed in these "meta HN rules discussion" threads.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#109

Post by fubdopsp »

ryandrake wrote: post #76
mapontosevenths wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am more annoyed by the anti-AI luddites filling the comments with low value complaints than I am by quality content written partially by an LLM. Those low value complaints add nothing to the conversation, and the content didnt make it to the front page because it was bad. If the sole objection is "AI bad", keep it to yourself....its boring.

In every single article's comments now, there's always someone coming out of the woodwork to post "This article is written by LLM." These comments are about as useless as "The website's color scheme is annoying" and "The website breaks the [back button | scrollbar]." (which, by the way, are not allowed per the HN guidelines[1]) If anything should be banned, it's low-effort "This is AI" commentary. It adds absolute ze…

It's much more than a "tangential annoyance" and it adds a lot to the conversation--among other things, it establishes a norm that AI-generated blogspam is, well, spam and unwelcome.

Blogging, sharing blog posts, reading them, commenting on them--these are all acts of human communication. Farming any of these steps out to an LLM completely breaks down the social contract involved in participating in an online forum like this. What's the point?

It's the exact same effect that's playing out in many other areas where LLMs are encroaching: bypassing the "human effort" step has negative side effects that people who are only looking at the output are ignoring.

I actually find your opinion so infuriating that it's taking all my composure to not reply with something nastier. If you guys want to spend your time reading shitty LLM spam posts with shitty LLM comments, why don't you find another site to do it on instead of destroying this one.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#110

Post by layer8 »

MikeTheGreat wrote: post #86
tasuki wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your comment was generated by an LLM and hereby vote for your immediate and permanent instant ban.

I think that your comment was generated by Eliza, and hereby vote for you to get a karma boost for being Legit Old School, then an immediate and permanent instant ban. I'm joking, of course. If your comment was generated by Eliza it would have started with "How do you feel about 'I think your comment...'" :)

Can you elaborate on that?
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