Ask HN: Level of spam / sock puppet activity?

#1

Post by dave_au » Sat, Aug 15, 2009, 11:29 AM UTC

I've started looking at the "new" page a little more these days.

I've seen a few brand new users submitting facebook and yahoo, which could just be new users playing with submission. Recently there were 3 in submissions from 3 brand new users in a small amount of time, and each submission had 3 votes. This seemed a bit strange to me.

I'm sure a small amount of gaming of the system (or attempted gaming of the system) goes on, but I'm wondering how often it occurs.

Is it something that I can expect to see a bit of if I start checking out the "new" page regularly, or have I just been looking at the wrong time?

Re: Ask HN: Level of spam / sock puppet activity?

#2

Post by jacquesm » Sat, Aug 15, 2009, 11:33 AM UTC

Often enough that the code has provisions against it. Usually a big red flag is when a submission is only minutes old, is of low quality and has 3 or 4 votes on it.

I think the main reason for this is that if you manage to get a submission on the front page in the first couple of minutes that it exists momentum will take over (the homepage is a feedback loop, once there more people see your submission, so it will get voted up and stay longer on the homepage).

The detection of 'voter rings' (groups of people that vote each other up consistently) is not a simple problem.

I think that to stop a site such as HN from being gamed completely is very complicated, related to the the click-fraud combating efforts at projects like google adsense.

All things considered I'm actually surprised how little it seems to happen here (compared to other sites like HN), one of the main reasons is that it is (on a relative scale) still fairly small.

Making who votes for what public would make it possible to spot such voter rings much quicker.

As for the 'NEW' page being the place to look, I almost exclusively use the 'NEW' page, the 'News' page maybe once or twice per day. A lot of good stuff passes by the homepage simply because it does not attract enough votes.

Another problem is the sometimes sluggish reaction of the moderators to these tricks, (see the link right below you for a nice example), any clicks from HN to a spammed site will increase the chance of repeat actions.

A 'barrier to entry' (say 25 points of karma before you can post your first article) would be another good thing to do.

Re: Ask HN: Level of spam / sock puppet activity?

#3

Post by deutronium » Sat, Aug 15, 2009, 1:42 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #2

Often enough that the code has provisions against it. Usually a big red flag is when a submission is only minutes old, is of low quality and has 3 or 4 votes on it. I think the main reason for this is that if you manage to get a submission on the front page in the first couple of minutes that it exists momentum will take over (the homepage is a feedback loop, once there more people see your submission, so it will get…

I think a 'barrier to entry' sounds a very good plan. I guess you could somehow filter the 'new' page for submissions by people > 25 karma and see if it cuts the spam.

Re: Ask HN: Level of spam / sock puppet activity?

#4

Post by gabrielroth » Sat, Aug 15, 2009, 2:05 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #2

Often enough that the code has provisions against it. Usually a big red flag is when a submission is only minutes old, is of low quality and has 3 or 4 votes on it. I think the main reason for this is that if you manage to get a submission on the front page in the first couple of minutes that it exists momentum will take over (the homepage is a feedback loop, once there more people see your submission, so it will get…

All things considered I'm actually surprised how little it seems to happen here (compared to other sites like HN).

My understanding is that a big part of the reason for this is human moderators who remove inappropriate content. Identifying spam posts is only difficult if you do it algorithmically.

Re: Ask HN: Level of spam / sock puppet activity?

#5

Post by jacquesm » Sat, Aug 15, 2009, 2:29 PM UTC

deutronium wrote: post #3

jacquesm wrote: post #2

Often enough that the code has provisions against it. Usually a big red flag is when a submission is only minutes old, is of low quality and has 3 or 4 votes on it. I think the main reason for this is that if you manage to get a submission on the front page in the first couple of minutes that it exists momentum will take over (the homepage is a feedback loop, once there more people see your submission, so it will get…

I think a 'barrier to entry' sounds a very good plan. I guess you could somehow filter the 'new' page for submissions by people > 25 karma and see if it cuts the spam.

Make it an option, most of the people that keep the 'new' page clean help by flagging. That way those that want to do that can continue to see them.

Re: Ask HN: Level of spam / sock puppet activity?

#6

Post by rbanffy » Sat, Aug 15, 2009, 2:44 PM UTC

I think one good reason is that HN is ugly: it scares away the people I would want scared away if I were HN. It's also not very user friendly - a couple very clever friends of mine find the UI somewhat confusing. They see bug, I see feature.

But I must confess a tiny little bit of shady conduct: I tried to engineer my karma to get exactly 1337 points (slowing down posts when getting close and, once it passed, trying to lower it through a variety of tactics, from light trolling to plainly asking to be downvoted - without much success, I must add). I couldn't get a screenshot at the right moment and the best I have is a 1338.

Right now, I have 1402, which was a nice card reader made my IBM to accompany its much more interesting 1401 computer. I have a screenshot to prove.

I will try again on 3278 (the first mainframe terminal I used), 4341 (the mainframe it was attached to) and 6502 (my most beloved micro-processor). Prime palindromes may also interest me, as scaled/rounded physical or math constants. sqrt(2) * 1000 is very close. 2718, 3142... What's the first prime number after 1402?

I will consider other "karma sightseeing" ideas, so, if anyone wants to suggest some, please, feel free.

From time to time I also post my own blog entries here, as the crowd HN attracts a tad more interesting than my regular "oops-wrong-page-get-me-outa-here" readers, and so are the discussions. I will probably touch up one tomorrow and post it here. Maybe a second one (about my karma engineering experiences), if I get to write it. I gather they tend to be of high quality too like http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=726922, that generated some interesting discussion.

Other submissions, like http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=743423 end up forgotten. And that one is even unfair, because David Alan Grier's podcast is most outstanding.