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Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

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Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#371

Post by Diogenesian »

ryandrake wrote: post #65
jorvi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The times I've pointed point out pretty blatant AI comments, I get nuked with downvotes. So often that I've stopped pointing them out. Before you say I'm just falsely calling them out, it's typical ChatGPT style of either very amicable or Nobel Laureate tone, lots of formatting, with a couple of paragraphs and then a clever one-line punchline at the end. If you look at those commenters their history, it's all like th…

IMO posting "This article is AI" does not add anything to the conversation. The HN guidelines[1] include: Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. and Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. I'd argue pointing out that you thi…

It is very useful when the LLM-generated article is full of inaccuracies. Look how confused people were in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48873424 A disclaimer on HN saying "AI generated" would have cleared things up instantly.

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#372

Post by supermatt »

dang wrote: post #42

We don't allow genai text on HN itself - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079 . How to enforce it is a separate question, of course, but the rule exists. We don't have a similar rule yet about article content but my sense is that the community mostly doesn't want to read it—or, to put it more conservatively, discounts it. This is why we see s…

Some of us use genAI as an accessibility tool. It enables people to write and publish work that otherwise wouldn't exist.

Some people already dismiss genuinely useful content solely based on the use of AI to assist in writing it - i am not sure what flagging would do other than to reinforce that prejudice.

I posted a couple of my articles here, and the one that got traction was generally well received (and also received some constructive feedback from those who acknowledged that is was AI assisted) - but it is evident across HN there is a vocal minority who outright dismiss content solely because it was "AI generated" completely disregarding the content itself. I appreciate this is personal taste, or LLM fatigue, or whatever, but its not really constructive.

If what you want to do is target the slop while not targeting the quality content, then that is what the voting mechanism already does. If people don't like something they can downvote it. Flagging content as AI generated is just a dogwhistle to those who want to downvote AI generated content. If anything, id rather see a rule that stops people commenting on stuff just to dismiss it as "LLM slop".

Its already trivial to avoid detection with fine-tuned humanisers [i] built on non-instruction-tuned models. That makes the flag mostly useless - or worse - a way of penalising any content you disagree with. I'd rather not hide what I am doing and have something that I feel reads well than hide it and sacrifice the message to satisfy a vocal minority.

[i] https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.19516

EDIT: downvotes, as expected. hope you see this anyway @dang. Downvotes kind of make my point for me.

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#374

Post by lezojeda »

IgorPartola wrote: post #48

Nobody wants to label their stuff as AI generated because they removed credibility. Communities can flag posts as AI generated based on speculation and telltales but it won’t be 100% and will take extra work. I think the era of the blog is simply dead now and that’s mostly ok. Blogspam and corporate blogs had killed quality bogs ages ago even before AI was a thing. The real question is what replaces it. Oh and of cou…

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#375

Post by Hendrikto »

dang wrote: post #42

We don't allow genai text on HN itself - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079 . How to enforce it is a separate question, of course, but the rule exists. We don't have a similar rule yet about article content but my sense is that the community mostly doesn't want to read it—or, to put it more conservatively, discounts it. This is why we see s…

> my sense is that the community mostly doesn't want to read it

I can confirm. Most LLM-written content is low effort, low value. This is somewhat by construction. You get the blandest takes in the blandest language.

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#378

Post by Hendrikto »

supermatt wrote: post #372
dang wrote: post #42

We don't allow genai text on HN itself - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079 . How to enforce it is a separate question, of course, but the rule exists. We don't have a similar rule yet about article content but my sense is that the community mostly doesn't want to read it—or, to put it more conservatively, discounts it. This is why we see s…

Some of us use genAI as an accessibility tool. It enables people to write and publish work that otherwise wouldn't exist. Some people already dismiss genuinely useful content solely based on the use of AI to assist in writing it - i am not sure what flagging would do other than to reinforce that prejudice. I posted a couple of my articles here, and the one that got traction was generally well received (and also recei…

> I'd rather not hide what I am doing

So why are you doing that by sloppyfying your own writing? If you want people to take interest in your writing, it should probably actually be your own writing.

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#379

Post by wartywhoa23 »

archagon wrote: post #76
ryandrake wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If what people here say is right, and AI usage online is growing and accelerating, then by the end of the year, the vast, vast majority articles posted to the internet (and linked by HN readers) are going to be AI slop, at which point it is not going to matter. "This article is AI" is going to add about as much insight to the conversation as "The author used a spell checker."

A good link aggregator should strive to select the <1% of articles that are actually high quality. Who cares what “everyone” is doing?

> Who cares what “everyone” is doing?

FOMO-suffering hype junkies do care if there's enough fellow roof jumpers to join to and sing something like "well, define high quality first" in chorus on their way to the ground.

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#380

Post by gruez »

dang wrote: post #42

We don't allow genai text on HN itself - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079 . How to enforce it is a separate question, of course, but the rule exists. We don't have a similar rule yet about article content but my sense is that the community mostly doesn't want to read it—or, to put it more conservatively, discounts it. This is why we see s…

>We don't have a similar rule yet about article content but my sense is that the community mostly doesn't want to read it—or, to put it more conservatively, discounts it.

It's definitely not universal. I've seen articles that seem clearly AI-generated, but still get upvoted because the community likes the title/thesis.

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