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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

#511

Post by 113 »

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 get the feeling that it's not worth looking at because it was probably made using LLMs

This is the big one for me. Small toy website someone has made as a passion project used to be the big draw of HN for me but now I just a assume it's a vibe-coded mess that'll 404 in 7 months.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#512

Post by TZubiri »

mosura wrote: post #481
TZubiri wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that they don't make trust decisions, rather they give information to the user so that they can decide whether to trust and for what purpose. Linkedin more so than facebook, facebook shows list of common contacts, linkedin shows that plus a literal resume.

Maybe, but that just pushes that load on to the user that defeats the point. Computers are about automation.

No software can do everything, Good software makes concessions.

More concretely the ideal software would require a volume and speed of user input that is unfeasible, and the size and complexity of such software would balloon such that development and maintenance costs would be unfeasible, furthermore the more features, the more customization users want, so customization is an additional dimension.

But sure, go make a system that reads my mind and decides whether I want to trust a USER to do SOMETHING.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#513

Post by valeena »

rl3 wrote: post #430
dang wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Here is a recent litmus test: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47051852 . How can we filter the lightweight stuff while still benefiting from posts like these? (a bit more about this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47056384 , with a reply from the OP)

> How can we filter the lightweight stuff while still benefiting from posts like these? Well, the simplest automated method would be to run the post and comment together through an LLM with a prompt that's roughly: "Is this person claiming to be the author or co-creator of the work discussed in this submission?" Only green accounts subject to it. I predict you'd probably have a very low false positive and false negat…

I can't wait to watch this movie. I'm already sold by plot!

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#514

Post by saltyoldman »

dawnerd wrote: post #422
anonzzzies wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must be old and naive but you can make money with subreddits?

Plenty of subs blatantly allow certain brands to advertise while banning anyone else. Kind of amazed Reddit themselves haven’t put more effort into to stopping it since it kinda sidesteps their in house advertising.

Because said 100k'er are probably paying off someone inside reddit. Remember when Ebay sent some couple bloody pigs masks? Yeah evil people work at companies.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#515

Post by mosura »

TZubiri wrote: post #512
mosura wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but that just pushes that load on to the user that defeats the point. Computers are about automation.

No software can do everything, Good software makes concessions. More concretely the ideal software would require a volume and speed of user input that is unfeasible, and the size and complexity of such software would balloon such that development and maintenance costs would be unfeasible, furthermore the more features, the more customization users want, so customization is an additional dimension. But sure, go make a…

This comment may yet motivate me to actually build the system in question so I can avoid having to read ones like it in future.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#516

Post by LordDragonfang »

hananova wrote: post #438
dang wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Here is a recent litmus test: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47051852 . How can we filter the lightweight stuff while still benefiting from posts like these? (a bit more about this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47056384 , with a reply from the OP)

Maybe have a signup flow where you can skip the new account restriction by putting some file on a website of some currently trending link. And then the restriction is lifted temporarily for the thread linking to it?

Not every post is from the website of the person who is the topic of it. It's common to have e.g. a blogpost about $thing and then a new account chimes in with "Hey, I authored $thing 10 years ago when I was working for $company, someone linked me this post. [some contributions to the topic]"

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#517

Post by LordDragonfang »

kazinator wrote: post #425
dang wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Here is a recent litmus test: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47051852 . How can we filter the lightweight stuff while still benefiting from posts like these? (a bit more about this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47056384 , with a reply from the OP)

You would need, say, a StackExchange-like crowdsourced moderation system whereby users with relatively high karma are randomly selected to check posts from new account, by casting votes to reject or keep.

HN already has something like that -- high-karma accounts can flag comments/posts which are a poor fit for HN. It's just a blacklist, not a whitelist.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#519

Post by catlikesshrimp »

Suggestion 1: Accounts can only upvote once a day. Accountscan only downvote twice a day. Spam account farming uses upvotes to boost spam accouts in the same farm, hence restricting upvotes. About downvotes, if they aren't somewhat restricted, they will be used to appreciating spam accounts by devaluing legitimate users.

Suggestion 2: Missing AI hype is better than drowning everything else in AI hype, IMHO. Temporarily block AI themes from "Show HN"

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#520

Post by starkparker »

AstroBen wrote: post #143
starkparker wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has long been my biggest issue, much bigger than new accounts spamming slop. There are accounts with 10000x karma that do little more than feed links from the NY Times and similar publications, regardless of their relevance or value. Each one gets 4-5 karma, a few crack double digits. Post 10 or 20 a day over a year or two and they're five figures. Pure farming.

What's the point? It's not like karma gets you anything.. ..or are they selling the accounts?

No idea. One such account's posted 24 articles in the last two weeks, most from either nytimes.com, theguardian.com, or newyorker.com. Half of them are unrelated to tech.

They averaged 14 karma per post, but most of that (218) is in one NYT share that hit.

That's right on the norm for this account. The prior two weeks of spam had one hit in 26 (Guardian, 500+ karma). The prior two weeks of spam had one hit in 30 (London Review of Books, on the Iran war, 100+ points before getting flagged). The prior two weeks, one hit in 15 (Guardian, 81 points, a dupe of an earlier submission).

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