Clearly, I'm surprised there isn't a spam filter that detects this obvious attack.
Seeing as there is usually no obvious spam attacks, there IS a filter. Assume competence :) https://paulgraham.com/spam.html
Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?
411–420 of 513 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?
#412[dead]
Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?
#413Interesting 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!
Really wonder, if this kind of spam is the perfect application for an LLM based agent.
I mean, at least LLMs would have different text in different messages.
Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?
#414Are you lonely and want to do something? Flag those spam comments. Yeah, I was surprised by the amount, it feels like an attack rather than spam. I hope this didn't interrupt Dang from something more important.
For anyone like me, unable to figure out how to do that - you click Reply, and then there's a 'flag' link.
I tried at first. It's a losing game against this number of spammy comments.
The temporary solution is to shadow ban the comments, the usernames seems to follow 2 naming schemas. Banning them completely will alert the attacker to change the naming schema, or to make it more random, which will make stopping them even more difficult.
Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?
#415https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40115155
Yeah this thread is full of spam.
Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?
#416Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?
#417Yup. 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.
The founders are "John Smith" and "Jane Doe", and they're incorporated in Malta.
Anyone who does business with this outfit has it coming.
Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
For anyone like me, unable to figure out how to do that - you click Reply, and then there's a 'flag' link.
Or click the timestamp.
All these approaches increase server load. You're likely not the only one doing so, so the server has to respond to a read and flag request for every person. I'm not sure how many flags it takes to kill a post, something like 6 iirc. When you multiply that by the number of spam posts it adds up to a lot.
I'm honestly perplexed that HN doesn't have any kind of string filtering facility considering its centrality in the tech ecosystem.
Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?
#419[flagged]
Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News under attack from spam bots?
#420[flagged]