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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

#211

Post by Lerc »

krapp wrote: post #68
Lerc wrote: post #55

There have been numerous stories on HN where someone directly involved with the story has created an account specifically to engage in discussion about whatever the story was about. Losing that seems too high of a price to pay. Yes there are AI generated comments, in the past there has been script generated comments. You can report, downvote, or just ignore and move on. I am aware of posts like this existing, but I f…

>Losing that seems too high of a price to pay. Assuming the mods just auto-ban new accounts and require them to be vouched and to earn minimum karma before being visible, those comments can be vouched up or approved by the moderators. The poster won't know that they've been banned, of course, because that's how shadowbanning works, so the approval process should be seamless for them. But how often does that happen ve…

>those comments are malicious in effect if not intent.

I don't believe that is possible. I think malice requires intent.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#212

Post by Barbing »

SoftTalker wrote: post #204
Uvix wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like restricting posts but not comments from a fresh account would thread that needle pretty well?

I'd suggest: new accounts are read-only for at least a week. Then they can comment (rate limited at first, gradually relaxed) and vote, and then after some additional amount of time and/or karma they can submit a post. Maybe some of these mechanisms are already in place? Bots can probably game this too but drive-by bots maybe won't be patient enough.

Immediate comment privileges are really important. Lots of examples, but to give a silly one, someone pastes their clipboard without realizing it includes their API key or their email. Good Samaritans should be able to say, "Hey, I just caught something."

And, as another commenter mentions, if someone shares your work, you should be able to comment on that thread without delay.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#213

Post by john01dav »

trinsic2 wrote: post #208
HendrikHensen wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the problem is you can be tracked by your email when you sign up for a new account. So I am not sure how this can be helpful.

This matters when you're hiding from the website. It doesn't matter if you're just trying to hide such things from the public.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#214

Post by elaus »

SoftTalker wrote: post #204
Uvix wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like restricting posts but not comments from a fresh account would thread that needle pretty well?

I'd suggest: new accounts are read-only for at least a week. Then they can comment (rate limited at first, gradually relaxed) and vote, and then after some additional amount of time and/or karma they can submit a post. Maybe some of these mechanisms are already in place? Bots can probably game this too but drive-by bots maybe won't be patient enough.

It seems easy enough to circumvent: "We're launching our product in 2 weeks, so let the AI create and 'warm up' 20 new HN users so they're ready to shill".

It's really not a problem that can be solved easily :(

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#215

Post by ArekDymalski »

elpocko wrote: post #50
Oras wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish for karma based too if we managed to get filters. I want to see posts only by accounts with {x}+ karma points.

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.

Core function of HN Front page is based on "other people filtering stuff for others". Filtering out by any criteria (karma, account color, first letter of the nickname, whatever) doesn't automatically mean that someone is a jerk as you have stated in the comments nearby. It just means that someone is selecting the information to consume and does not harm anyone (perhaps besides the selective person who might miss interesting info due to selection).

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#216

Post by MarsIronPI »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #175
atoav wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eliza was one of the first chatbots from the mid to late 60s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA

that's interesting, tell me more about one of the first chatbots from the mid to late 60s

BTW, what ELIZA implementation are y'all using? The Emacs Doctor?

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#217

Post by scratchyone »

vel0city wrote: post #79
BalinKing wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, updated my original comment—I meant to qualify it to only those cases where it's blatantly obvious. Obviously a lot of ambiguous comments will slip through as a result, but I agree with you that false negatives are better than false positives.

Your comments use em dashes. Many would claim those are vastly overrepresented in AI language and thus an account overly using them are blatantly AI. I don't think your account is AI just by these few comments, but I would like to point out that most rubrics one might use to determine what is obviously AI might end up including the way you talk. If there was a truly accurate tell, some algorithm you could feed a few…

For what it's worth, there are modern LLM detectors with extremely low false-positive rates. The tech has advanced quite a bit since the ZeroGPT days. Personally I've gotten very good results from Pangram Labs. Still can't directly ban people though because false positives are always possible.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#218

Post by Barbing »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #174
Uvix wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like restricting posts but not comments from a fresh account would thread that needle pretty well?

If that were to happen, I'd also suggest that comments from fresh accounts should also have URLs deleted or disabled.

Even something like…

Example[.]com

But don’t worry, HN has been thoughtful about links from new accounts for months and months (can’t speak for longer, but maybe/probably). Effort could well be duplicative unless I’m unaware of some more granular detail.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#219

Post by Barbing »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #177
Uvix wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like restricting posts but not comments from a fresh account would thread that needle pretty well?

I'm surprised posts aren't restricted a bit more. Maybe that's just my old school "lurk moar" mentality, but I feel like I really need to understand the vibes of a community before I start to contribute posts to it.

True

Mm, balancing against “long-time lurker, made an account just to post this”…

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#220

Post by zahlman »

delichon wrote: post #9
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…

The moderators are supposed to just know it when they see it? It's that black and white to you? Or are lots of false positives a price we have to pay?

In some fraction of cases, it's really obvious.

I would argue that those cases are really the ones that cause an LLM-specific harm, i.e., which make people feel like they aren't exclusively among fellow humans.

If someone posts something that doesn't clearly read LLM-ish, but is otherwise terrible, it's not really different from if the same terrible thing had been written by hand.

I don't think anyone who objects to LLM comments is really demanding a super-low false negative rate. Just get rid of the zero-effort stuff. For example, recently I've seen a lot of comments from new accounts that are just sycophantic towards TFA and try to highlight / summarize a specific idea or two, but don't really demonstrate any original thought (just, like, basic reading comprehension and an ability to express agreement). And they'll take a paragraph to do so, where a human with the same level of interest in the material might just say "good post" (granted, there's an argument to be made for excluding that, too).

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