I also like that idea
What’s the criteria you had in mind
Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
151–160 of 559 posts
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#152Eventually HN is going to need to charge people $1 to post, just for spam filtering. Maybe donate the money to open source or something.
Charging money does not seem a very good idea in a site like this where you expect users to upload all the content. Also this would require credit card info which is a massive barrier, even if you were to charge just 1 cent.
No credit card. You have to send a $1 bill by snail mail, which is proof of "work" (mailing the bill) as well as $$. You enter the bill's serial number when you enroll the account, and the account activates when the bill arrives. You can be pretty anonymous this way.
I once proposed a scheme like this where you would donate to charities who would post lists of serial numbers they had received, for this purpose, but it never got anywhere. Maybe we need it more now than we did then.
I guess instead of mailing a $1 bill, if necessary it could be a hand drawn picture of a kitten (artistry not required). Authentication would involve checking the paper for pressure marks made by the pen. I wonder how many would take the trouble to fake that.
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#153We're going to at least restrict Show HNs for a while. I do think this is relevant though: "HN can't be immune from macro trends" - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Please do so. And, forgive me if I speak heresy, but there has to be more proof of work (friction) to create accounts. I was shocked at how easy it is for something like chatgpt atlas to create new accounts on the fly.
I rotate accounts on "social media" (mostly Reddit and Hacker News, the others don't interest me) every few weeks or months to make sure not too much of my post history accumulates in one account. I would dislike it very much if there would be high friction to create new accounts. On the other hand my behavior is probably a major outlier.
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#154Eventually HN is going to need to charge people $1 to post, just for spam filtering. Maybe donate the money to open source or something.
Charging money does not seem a very good idea in a site like this where you expect users to upload all the content. Also this would require credit card info which is a massive barrier, even if you were to charge just 1 cent.
It worked for years for the SomethingAwful forums. A nominal charge for the ability to post, with plenty of 'timeout' chances for rehabilitation before an outright ban keeps out most of the junk.
It feels wrong at first to pay for commenting on a forum, but the alternative is almost always a gentle slide towards a trash dump. AI means that slide is almost a vertical slope.
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 corne…
There's almost no shot to get hand authored posts some views (I tried with one of mine recently). I felt like I submitted it and a moment later there were like 20 new very obviously AI generated posts ahead of it.
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 l…
Hey, I'm not a fan of LLM slop articles and blogspam either and if I could hold back the tide, I'd try to. But I'm just saying that pointing it out each and every time is just going to become its own form of spam. We're quickly entering a world where 99+% of what is written online, be it blogs, amateur news, or actual professional journalism, is LLM generated. You hate it, I hate it, but it's coming. The state of jou…
I still think it has strong normative value. Maybe at some point when norms have become firmly established these comments will be pointless and spammy but I don't think we're anywhere close to that point yet.
A lot of blogging is essentially self-expression and that stuff won't be taken over by LLMs (it defeats the whole point). Other blogging is done with some kind of sales/promotional/brand purpose and the extent to which LLMs will dominate this will depend on how we as a society react to it (see the AI art battles) since if people react negatively to it it becomes counterproductive.
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Maybe there can be a dedicated 'flag botspam' button? We already have flagging and downvoting?
Abusing the flag button by reporting LLM generated posts and comments (which are not breaking any current guidelines) seems like a good way to get your flags ignored.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47290841
It is against the rules though
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#158I 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 your comment was generated by an LLM and hereby vote for your immediate and permanent instant ban.
I've seen people admit it. I've even seen a commenter say that they were an agent. We can do these cases.
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please do so. And, forgive me if I speak heresy, but there has to be more proof of work (friction) to create accounts. I was shocked at how easy it is for something like chatgpt atlas to create new accounts on the fly.
I rotate accounts on "social media" (mostly Reddit and Hacker News, the others don't interest me) every few weeks or months to make sure not too much of my post history accumulates in one account. I would dislike it very much if there would be high friction to create new accounts. On the other hand my behavior is probably a major outlier.
I think yours might be extreme. But I think the anonymity here is widely appreciated. And frankly necessarily relies on easy creation of accounts.
People share things that they often wouldn’t. And somehow the culture remains mostly civil. It’s a pretty fantastic forum IMHO.
Changing the rules would surely change the vibe, so to speak.
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
You want other people to deal with the things you don't like and filter stuff for you, to improve your own experience and shield you from the filthy masses. God beware you have to endure a comment you don't like, your royal highness. I'd rather see you gone than the people you complain about.
Filtering is a valid form of improving signals. If there there was a reliable heuristic for users posting low effort content that was better then the user would be considering that instead. If someone in a chatroom for example is being spammy with their messages at the expense of noticing posts one finds more relevant then blocking them isn't due to considering them some filthy pleb but improving their experience. If…
My system has been working pretty well: using some extension or another that has mute functionality, if I see a person post an extremely low quality comment, I look at their comment history for two or three pages. If there is no comment of value in that set, I mute the user. The board gets better each day.