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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

#81

Post by rkomorn »

ryandrake wrote: post #76
mapontosevenths wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am more annoyed by the anti-AI luddites filling the comments with low value complaints than I am by quality content written partially by an LLM. Those low value complaints add nothing to the conversation, and the content didnt make it to the front page because it was bad. If the sole objection is "AI bad", keep it to yourself....its boring.

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…

I very much agree.

The number of comments I see complaining about "it's not this, it's that" and other "LLMisms" definitely frustrates me more than the original content.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#82

Post by vivid242 »

neom wrote: post #12

I almost emailed dang this morning to offer to help out tho I'm not particularly technical. Few solutions I thought of: 1 - honeypot, hide some links llms can follow if stuff gets posted in it, unlikely to be a human. 2 - Make an captcha that only llms can answer, I recently made 2 social networks, one that humans couldn't join by making the submission question too difficult to figure out quickly. 3- Use an LLM to de…

We need new ways to prove our humanness.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#83

Post by tayo42 »

ryandrake wrote: post #76
mapontosevenths wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am more annoyed by the anti-AI luddites filling the comments with low value complaints than I am by quality content written partially by an LLM. Those low value complaints add nothing to the conversation, and the content didnt make it to the front page because it was bad. If the sole objection is "AI bad", keep it to yourself....its boring.

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…

I was thinking he same thing but didn't want to post my complaint about other commenters becasue I think that's against the rules too?

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#84

Post by Springtime »

elpocko wrote: post #75
Springtime wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Filtering is a valid form of improving signals. If there there was a reliable heuristic for users posting low effort content that was better then the user would be considering that instead. If someone in a chatroom for example is being spammy with their messages at the expense of noticing posts one finds more relevant then blocking them isn't due to considering them some filthy pleb but improving their experience. If…

HN is already heavily moderated. Low-effort posters and spammers get downranked immediately, based on their behavior. OP is simply intolerant and unable to function in a social setting. Minimum karma and account age filters are discriminatory, anti-social features that should not exist on any social site. The people asking for such features are intolerant jerks, no different from ageists or ableists. They are parasit…

This thread is evidence that some are unhappy with the state of a core HN feature due to users posting what they judge to be low effort content, so it does get through.

The comments here are about possible mitigations. Based on this feedback dang has apparently now restricted new accounts from posting Show HN threads, so globally now there is a form of filtering users from being seen by others based on a heuristic.

Your initial comment is written with the impression that the poster wanting to improve their chances of higher effort content is making some judgement on the posters themselves as though they're conceited ('filthy masses', 'your royal highness') when they're merely considering one approach to reducing noise from their feed.

I myself in this very comment chain have already posted that I disagree that filtering by karma would help due to gaming issues but I don't see the problem with the user's goal.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#86

Post by MikeTheGreat »

tasuki wrote: post #73
BalinKing wrote: post #7

I furthermore wish that "posting an LLM-generated comment (i.e. and passing it off as your own)" was worthy of an instant ban, because I see this sort of behavior from non-green accounts as well. EDIT: I meant (but totally forgot) to qualify that my "proposal" would only apply when the LLM-ness is self-obvious—idk, make up a "reasonable person" standard or something. Presumably, the moderators would err on the side o…

I think your comment was generated by an LLM and hereby vote for your immediate and permanent instant ban.

I think that your comment was generated by Eliza, and hereby vote for you to get a karma boost for being Legit Old School, then an immediate and permanent instant ban.

I'm joking, of course. If your comment was generated by Eliza it would have started with "How do you feel about 'I think your comment...'" :)

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#87

Post by Kwpolska »

bmacho wrote: post #29

Accounts have to start posting somewhen. Moderators don't have the capacity (and fairly, it is impossible) to check if they are bots or humans. There are no good solutions, there are hundreds of thousands of intelligences out there, trained millions of hours on how to scam humans, capable of spitting out text tirelessly and shamelessly, and there will be only more of them, tens, hundreds, thousands times more.

Comments should be allowed from day one, but submissions should require some experience and karma.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#88

Post by [deleted] »

andai wrote: post #49
delichon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moderators are supposed to just know it when they see it? It's that black and white to you? Or are lots of false positives a price we have to pay?

Yeah it's weird, there was one case where I thought it was AI but wasn't sure. Several other comments pointed it out, too. Author claimed he wrote it manually. (Which is honestly even more concerning!) Maybe there can be a dedicated 'flag botspam' button? Then again it's a nuanced issue. I see AI used in a large percentage of writing now, so would this rule apply to the article as well?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#89

Post by shimman »

delichon wrote: post #9
BalinKing wrote: post #7

I furthermore wish that "posting an LLM-generated comment (i.e. and passing it off as your own)" was worthy of an instant ban, because I see this sort of behavior from non-green accounts as well. EDIT: I meant (but totally forgot) to qualify that my "proposal" would only apply when the LLM-ness is self-obvious—idk, make up a "reasonable person" standard or something. Presumably, the moderators would err on the side o…

The moderators are supposed to just know it when they see it? It's that black and white to you? Or are lots of false positives a price we have to pay?

Something we need to remember that AI was trained on every public internet comment, the vast majority of which are legit terrible. The biggest tell that someone is using AI is having multiple paragraphs saying the same point over and over again. Even trolls are more succinct.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#90

Post by krapp »

elpocko wrote: post #75
Springtime wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Filtering is a valid form of improving signals. If there there was a reliable heuristic for users posting low effort content that was better then the user would be considering that instead. If someone in a chatroom for example is being spammy with their messages at the expense of noticing posts one finds more relevant then blocking them isn't due to considering them some filthy pleb but improving their experience. If…

HN is already heavily moderated. Low-effort posters and spammers get downranked immediately, based on their behavior. OP is simply intolerant and unable to function in a social setting. Minimum karma and account age filters are discriminatory, anti-social features that should not exist on any social site. The people asking for such features are intolerant jerks, no different from ageists or ableists. They are parasit…

>What would happen if every single user enabled their minimum karma filter?

Hacker News would be a much better place.

In fact, filter stories as well as users. I want to filter out any story with fewer than three upvotes and any flagged comments. That would improve quality tremendously.

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