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Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#321

Post by sdenton4 »

elaus wrote: post #214
SoftTalker wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :(

Any amount of friction reduces the amount of slop. What proportion of clankers are going to realize that they need to warm up the accounts two weeks in advance? Answer: a proportion that your never going to see with that barrier in place.

With a couple few layers of defense, you'll weed out almost all of the bad actors. Without strong monetary incentives for spamming, you also avoid most persistent actors.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#322

Post by tombert »

alabhyajindal wrote: post #37

100%. Not sure what the solution is but I have lost interest in Show HNs these days. Part of it is because when someone posted before, it usually meant they spent a fair amount of time thinking, and found it worthwhile to spend energy on the project. This was a nice first filter for bad ideas and now no longer exists. Even for posts that are interesting to me, I get the feeling that it's not worth looking at because…

I certainly hope they do something.

I'm not opposed to AI automating away stuff no one liked doing, or even more utilitarian things in general, but robots posting on social media and discussion sites seems antithetical. I don't know what the point of talking to a robot would be when I could talk to Claude if I wanted to do that.

I'm not even 100% sure why people are doing Show HN for low-effort stuff shit that was done in 45 minutes in Claude. I guess it's trying to resume-pad or build a brand or something?

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#323

Post by imiric »

fubdopsp wrote: post #109
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…

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…

I agree with you, but...

> Blogging, sharing blog posts, reading them, commenting on them--these are all acts of human communication.

Not anymore. Bots are now the majority of producers and consumers of all content on the internet. The social contract you mention has been broken for years, and this new technology has further cemented that.

Those of us who value communication with humans will have to find other platforms where content authorship is strictly regulated, or, at the very least, where tools are provided to somewhat reliably filter out machine-generated content. Or retreat from public spaces altogether.

FWIW I have very little hope that this issue will be addressed on HN, considering [1].

[1]: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/industry/ai

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#324

Post by jsunderland323 »

SsgMshdPotatoes wrote: post #292
jsunderland323 wrote: post #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 ty…

I don't think people are blasted for using AI (mostly), I think people are blasted for low effort work, just like pre-LLMs. LLMs just made it way easier to complete low effort projects, so therefore there is more of it.

Yeah, I agree but as someone in this thread said, if Temple OS came out today there is no way it wouldn’t be immediately derided as AI slop. That’s what worries me.

Blatant slop is obvious. Slop with a modicum of effort is harder. I’m still adjusting my slop-o-meter on other people’s work. It’s easy for me to identify my own slop, it’s not always so obvious when looking at someone else’s AI assisted work.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#325

Post by lagrange77 »

alwa wrote: post #310
8cvor6j844qw_d6 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, what are the alternatives to HN? Because if new account restrictions create enough friction, you lose legitimate users who periodically rotate accounts for privacy reasons. At some point the annoyance tips toward just lurking, and a forum where only old accounts talk is a stagnant forum given enough time.

Lobste.rs comes to mind. High enough friction that, even as a seasoned participant here, I haven’t tried over there yet.

Wow, i just noticed, that they block access from Brave Browser.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#326

Post by lagrange77 »

dextrous wrote: post #102
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 y…

> 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,

Wow this is really cyberpunk.

I'll bring my Yubikey!

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#327

Post by jtchang »

bombcar wrote: post #308
Waterluvian wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The SA Forums model does accomplish the goals of filtering out noise, but then you’re stuck with a stagnant community of “the right people.”

Unironically slashdot's moderating and meta-moderating is the best long-term system I've seen. Everything else seems to eventually cause new blood to dry up.

I remember reading slashdot but what is their system? Is there a separate set of mods that moderate the moderators?

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#328

Post by Lerc »

macintux wrote: post #252
Lerc wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>those comments are malicious in effect if not intent. I don't believe that is possible. I think malice requires intent.

Sufficiently advanced destructiveness is indistinguishable from malice.

If that were not the case there would be no need for Hanlon's razor.

The fact that Hanlon's razor needs to be said at all is to warn people about attributing malice to instances where none exist.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

It's not saying that instances that actions attributable to malice do not appear. It's saying it usually isn't malice.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#329

Post by localuser13 »

sdenton4 wrote: post #321
elaus wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :(

Any amount of friction reduces the amount of slop. What proportion of clankers are going to realize that they need to warm up the accounts two weeks in advance? Answer: a proportion that your never going to see with that barrier in place. With a couple few layers of defense, you'll weed out almost all of the bad actors. Without strong monetary incentives for spamming, you also avoid most persistent actors.

With enough layers you will also weed out almost all of the good actors. Normal people are busy and don't have time nor patience to jump over too many hoops to promote their cool new research, or to respond in a thread where someone linked it.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#330

Post by lovich »

rdevilla wrote: post #279
QuantumGood wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

user: pinkmuffinere created: August 8, 2021 karma: 2686

That's a baby in HN years.

It’s pre LLMs which I view as the real cutoff.

Account made in 2022 is dodgy. Accounts made 2023-forward that have a hint of LLM speak or are only spreading divisiveness get an immediate red flag from me.

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