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Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?

#331

Post by Arnavion »

tgv wrote: post #323
Arnavion wrote: post #315

Earlier 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.

That looks like a person, or a pretty good HNGPT. It's not your average spam. (Unless most comments have been deleted.)

When I said "Look at the username", I meant that. You're not going to get anything by analyzing the posting style of a shared account.

Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?

#333

Post by [deleted] »

joeyhage wrote: post #310
skilled wrote: post #5

Interesting that this wasn’t baked in as a preventative method for repeat usernames. Which is also ironic because why would this guy reuse the same username for his little spam campaign when it can be nuked in one line of code… Amateur stuff. Never seen it happen before though!

I’m also surprised that slurs/slang/foul language in usernames is allowed unless the server is overwhelmed and things are slipping past the validation.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?

#334

Post by fragmede »

Arnavion wrote: post #330
fragmede wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

if you have a way to map votes to the account that made them, I'm all ears.

Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?

#336

Post by A_Duck »

geerlingguy wrote: post #4

It 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.

Already was : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39981911

Claimed at the time to be working on HN support

Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?

#337

Post by hobs »

joeyhage wrote: post #310
skilled wrote: post #5

Interesting that this wasn’t baked in as a preventative method for repeat usernames. Which is also ironic because why would this guy reuse the same username for his little spam campaign when it can be nuked in one line of code… Amateur stuff. Never seen it happen before though!

I’m also surprised that slurs/slang/foul language in usernames is allowed unless the server is overwhelmed and things are slipping past the validation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem It's almost definitely them not filtering anything and letting the community manage it.

Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?

#338

Post by omoikane »

ergocoder wrote: post #321

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.

> single account

I think that's actually multiple similarly named accounts with the same prefix. I believe there are rate limits on how fast a single account can post.

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