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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

#501

Post by ProllyInfamous »

diacritical wrote: post #359

Some feedback and suggestions, in a somewhat rambling fashion: I'm using a new account and will likely use one forever, as I don't want lots of posts linked together, nor do I care about points or karma or whatever it's called. My first few comments are always shadowbanned. I also see lots of dead posts for new accounts with "showdead" turned on. A lot of them are normal, useful comments, some are inflammatory or jus…

You can use a longer-established /hn/account to vouch your burner's posts... unless you're worried about /hn/ linking your accounts, too (not just public scraping) — which they can, by IP address.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#502

Post by 3tdimhcsb »

vunderba wrote: post #388
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking of setting up a system to highlight sock-puppeters and other consistent-rule-violating accounts, as a 'fun project' that might improve the HN experience. But it strikes me that the HN staff probably already does something like this, they may not welcome a side-loaded project of this sort, and it would require some automated crawling of HN (which again may be unwelcomed). Finally, I don't actually have…

It'd be pretty easy to spot too, because most people don’t even bother trying to hide it (either out of laziness and/or ineptitude). A lot of users don’t seem to realize that anyone can click on the domain in a "Show HN", and Hacker News will show you all the times that domain has been submitted. So you’ll see four or five different low karma sock puppets accounts that have all submitted the same site.

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#504

Post by imiric »

fubdopsp wrote: post #418
imiric wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 platfo…

It's in a lot of people's interest to keep platforms like HN free of LLM spam, frankly. It's in our interest as people who want to keep our discussion site for actual human discussion (though from the other comments in this thread, this sentiment isn't universally shared, god knows why). It's also in the interest of AI companies since if they destroy internet spaces like this they lose valuable future training data.…

Like you say, some people are interested in keeping the discussion for humans only. Although we can't really know whether any opinion expressed here is coming from a human or not, including this one.

As for "AI" companies, their only interest is increasing their valuation. Historically speaking, most companies prioritize short-term profits, but during a bull market the incentives are even more skewed towards it. So poisoning the well of training data is seen as a future problem for someone else to figure out, or not. In the meantime, carpe pecuniam.

> If LLMs torpedo human engineering, who is going to create the new infrastructure (tools, frameworks, programming languages, etc) that LLMs are making such good use of today?

LLMs, of course. :) I don't think the people building these tools haven given these topics any serious thought. Whatever concerns they claim to have, regarding safety and otherwise, are merely performative.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#505

Post by Justkog »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #266

Reddit has tried this approach and, IMO, it's failed. A new human user will spend actual time creating a thoughtful and helpful post, only to be greeted by "sorry, your post has been removed by automod because you don't meet criteria". They get disheartened and walk away forever. The spammers, on the other hand, know how the rules work and so will just build their bots to work around this (waiting 30days, farming kar…

you are indeed describing my reddit experience, hence why I did not participate there while being a human

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#506

Post by diacritical »

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #501
diacritical wrote: post #359

Some feedback and suggestions, in a somewhat rambling fashion: I'm using a new account and will likely use one forever, as I don't want lots of posts linked together, nor do I care about points or karma or whatever it's called. My first few comments are always shadowbanned. I also see lots of dead posts for new accounts with "showdead" turned on. A lot of them are normal, useful comments, some are inflammatory or jus…

You can use a longer-established /hn/account to vouch your burner's posts... unless you're worried about /hn/ linking your accounts, too (not just public scraping) — which they can, by IP address.

I'm using Tor, HN can't link the IP address. Naturally, I trust HN more than random visitors/scrapers, but it's better to trust less people/institutions/things.

In the current system people can vouch for dead posts from shadowbanned new accounts, if I understand correctly. It seems people do it, to a certain degree at least, because I rarely see good comments that stay dead forever.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#507

Post by arsmoriendi »

i_think_so wrote: post #452
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

Whooosh! I think you missed the joke. :-) (I didn't, and I thank everyone involved for the nostalgic moment. Also, shout out to Dr. Sbaitso!)

There was also Dr. Abuse, a Spanish language chatbot created in 1992. I remember it being quite popular here in Argentina.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#508

Post by dang »

i_think_so wrote: post #455
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guidelines haven't even been updated to say that AI generated posts and submission aren't permitted even though it's been the policy for a couple of years now if one searches for postings by the moderators. So outsiders and new HN users have no reason to know that it's not allowed. I'm sure there are reasons for it but the inaction is all very mysterious from an outsider perspective.

This obviously should have been done years ago. @dang is there a reason it hasn't?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated

(@dang doesn't work and it took me a long time to find this comment again so I could reply!)

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#509

Post by dang »

i_think_so wrote: post #465
i_think_so wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This obviously should have been done years ago. @dang is there a reason it hasn't?

..so updating the guidelines is beyond the pale and suggesting it is downvote worthy? How very interesting.

"Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#510

Post by thinkingemote »

trinsic2 wrote: post #498
thinkingemote wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The discussion about the LLM assisted/written submission at the time, with replies by the author: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47055300 The defence given was essentially "just reformatted it for better grammar" It's obviously says LLM to me at first read through. I suspect that: a) less people are willing to expend a bit of energy to notice LLM usage given how much of it is. ("we've lost" theory) b) that peop…

Do you have any good links to guides on how to spot? I would like to care, but its hard to tell. and then what do we do when we spot it?

One guide that i hope is kept up to date: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing . Generally though it's a kind of pattern recognition which for some patterns seems visible to me.

I should clarify and revise my thoughts and initial comment. I do not think that not being able to detect it leads to lack of care. I actually think that many things have passed me by and in the future this will be even more as LLMs improve ("we're cooked").

As to "what do we do when we spot it" - you hit the nail on the head of the feelings I felt as I was writing the comment. What do we actually do, what can we change and should we attempt futile things?

And even the example dang gave - the actual submission as very good. Is any amount of LLM use okay and what's the level? I use LLMs at work but I don't like writing readmes or blog posts with it. But others might like writing code at work by hand and don't like writing text so use LLMs for that. Maybe I lower my expectations!

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