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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

#241

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…

The thing is, I can read something that's really terribly written and still extract useful information from it. (Suppose, for example, an LLM was directed to synthesize information from some sources that I wouldn't have thought of doing; or a submission simply makes me aware of a blind spot I had. Or I look up documentation and find something that's incredibly verbose and full of marketing-speak, but the code samples look reasonable and can be verified by testing and/or cross-reference.)

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#242

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…

This comment uses a lot of big words but it’s full of fallacies. The HN user base is not perfect at detecting LLM content but a lot of it does get flagged and downvoted eventually. About once a day I’ll click on a link, realize it’s AI slop, and go back to HN to flag it but discover that it’s already flagged. If you turn on showdead you can see all of the comments from LLM bots that have been discovered and shadowban…

Earlier today I found something that impressed me as awful slop, but I was hesitant to flag the submission because as far as I could tell it got the facts right (I didn't try to verify some details of who was involved with what, but I was familiar with the proposals the article was discussing).

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many HNers strongly argue that it's absolutely impossible to distinguish between AI text and non-AI text. Some of it seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to some of the occasional, one-sided stories of people who were accused of using LLMs and fired from their jobs. And some of it seems to be just hedging so that we don't develop a culture that could penalize their LLM-generated posts or code. We had people defending the…

Hmm, some LLM text is hard to detect, sure. Some is also horribly easy. If the text is full of: - Overly positive commentary and encouragement - Constant use of bullet point lists, bolding and emoji - This quaint forced 'funniness', like a misplaced attempt at being lighthearted - A lot of blablah that just missed the point - Not concise and to the point, but also not super long Then that really screams ChatGPT to me…

LOL. You just described your own comment!

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#244
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/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.

I recently had the same experience with a Show HN thread I posted.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#245
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 Hack…

I have seen accounts that were dormant for years suddenly start posting frequently, all with slop. (I don't know if this represents people having an epiphany about AI use, or accounts being compromised or just what.)

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#246
I’ve been mulling over this for a couple of days too. I have a project I want to share with the HN community that I put a substantial amount of effort into but it was definitely AI assisted (as is literally everything today).

I’ve read all of the source and I drove the architecture but it would be a stretch to say I didn’t ask for assistance on things that felt fuzzy or foreign to me. I also have generally stopped typing code. I still don’t think the LLM made the project though, it feels like my decision making.

If the bar for Show HN becomes no AI whatsoever then you’re just going to see a bunch of people covering their AI tracks. I’m reluctant to post it because I’m afraid of getting blasted by the community for using AI. At the same time, it is work that I’ve poured hundreds of hours into, that I’m proud of and that I think would be of interest to HN.

I read the Obliteratus post that made it to the front page the other day and I agree that is pure slop. While it’s frustrating that it took up front page space, it’s evident that the whole community caught on to the sloppiness of it all immediately and called it out. I just don’t think HN wants to set the precedent that no AI code should be shared.

I also saw a week or two ago that someone open sourced a project of theirs that wasn’t open source in the first place. The reason they stated was that they had vibe coded and were embarrassed to be discovered. If you want to get a concept out quickly with AI, you’re now hesitant to open source because of the precedent set by the community. I think that’s a scary thought to me. I would rather know the tools I’m using are AI generated/assisted and make the value judgement on if I trust the code and project owners.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#247

Devils advocate take: I think the quality of the ShowHN projects are in fact getting higher, at least the ones that land in the front page. The issue is that projects that used to take weeks, months, or even years of work now can be done in a weekend or so. It’s been democratizing, but it also means that when we look at these posts we (rightly) see that these new projects aren’t that much effort _with AI assistance_.…

> It’s been democratizing, but it also means that when we look at these posts we (rightly) see that these new projects aren’t that much effort _with AI assistance_.

This also appears to cause a serious shift in the kind of projects that are submitted (i.e.: towards things that are much more accelerated by AI assistance).

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#248
I'm very wary of this request, though I understand it. I've been reading HN daily since around 2014. My involvement was purely passive (e.g., I have been a lurker) because I really didn't think I had much to contribute that wasn't already stated better by others.

I didn't actually create my account until 2021? 2022? I can't remember. And I didn't make my first post or even comment until just last week.

While I think a minimum post count or reputation metric could perhaps reduce the AI generated posts, introducing friction also makes it harder for real people to contribute anything meaningful.

Furthermore, what does it matter if it's "AI generated"? Is some AI content ok? What's the pass/fail threshold on human vs AI generated text?

I made a Show post last week where I heavily relied on AI. I'm sure there are some "tells." But even so, I spent more than three hours working on the content of my post and my first response. Would my post have been acceptable to you?

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What would it mean to you if we were all using the Emacs Doctor?
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