well ARE YOU LONELY?
It might be a lot of spams, but it seems to come from a single account using a single sentence. Spammers are getting lazy these days.
Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?
321–330 of 513 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?
#322Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?
#323So if it is possible with comments, does it mean it is possible with voting? I'm wondering how many posts recently came to main page upvoted by bots
HN doesn't have any integrity about voting in general. Look at the "about" text of https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pwdisswordfishc for example, and then look at the username. There is a whole family of pwdisswordfish* accounts btw. The "b" account's "about" text even has a holier-than-thou attitude about it.
That looks like a person, or a pretty good HNGPT. It's not your average spam. (Unless most comments have been deleted.)
Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?
#324So if it is possible with comments, does it mean it is possible with voting? I'm wondering how many posts recently came to main page upvoted by bots
HN doesn't have any integrity about voting in general. Look at the "about" text of https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pwdisswordfishc for example, and then look at the username. There is a whole family of pwdisswordfish* accounts btw. The "b" account's "about" text even has a holier-than-thou attitude about it.
you're assuming votes from those accounts are being included in vote counts
Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?
#325This is why we can't have nice things.
Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?
#326Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?
#327Yup. The site being advertised is proxied through Cloudflare, and they're also using Supabase. Anyone from Cloudflare or Supabase care to remove your abusive customer? Also reported.
Unfortunately there's no proof that the spam accounts are linked to said site. If I were a competitor to the linked account and wanted to cause then damage, I could run a bot campaign purporting to be from them in order to get them kicked off their provider.
That’s possible, and is why the providers investigate (using the account history that we don’t have access to). Often, other customer data - or a 5 minute phone call - is enough for the provider to tell the difference.
Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?
#328It sure looks like it; every front page post has a dozen or so comments from unique bot accounts. Hopefully we don't see a 'Show HN: I created a spam bot service to advertise on every HN post' soon.
This very thread is under attack by spam bots...
Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?
#329Reminds me of when I was working for a university in early 2000s. I set up WebBB for a student organization to use and after checking back a week later it was thousands of spam posts.
Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN doesn't have any integrity about voting in general. Look at the "about" text of https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pwdisswordfishc for example, and then look at the username. There is a whole family of pwdisswordfish* accounts btw. The "b" account's "about" text even has a holier-than-thou attitude about it.
you're assuming votes from those accounts are being included in vote counts
You're missing the point that I didn't need to assume it.