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Ask HN: Is it time for HN to implement a form of captcha?

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Ask HN: Is it time for HN to implement a form of captcha?

#1

Post by Rooster61 »

First off, this thread is NOT a petition to rally against the moderation team. Considering the deluge of trash they deal with every day, I think they are doing a valiant job and are to be commended. Consider it merely a place to discuss, which is what HN does best.

That said, it's becoming more and more obvious every day that there is a tremendous amount of attempts by bots, and specifically AI agents, to inject slop into HN threads. I worry about the integrity of the discourse here and if the ever growing wave of garbage will overtake staff resources to deal with it. Is it time to implement captcha for HN? If so, should it be out of the box, or a new mechanism more tailored to the security and privacy-centric nature of the HN readership? Are captchas even still effective enough in the age of AI to warrant their use?

Re: Ask HN: Is it time for HN to implement a form of captcha?

#3

Post by losvedir »

I've been thinking the same. I'm actually building a little site that presents a textarea that you can type your comment into and it will track its changes over time (typing, editing, pasting, etc) and provide a little playback widget so someone can see the composition of the comment. The idea being you can include a link to the playback in your comment that you post here and someone can eyeball it and see if it looks like you really spent some time writing it, vs just pasting in LLM slop. Of course, a sophisticated agent could _simulate_ writing the comment, but I think it could still help in general.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time for HN to implement a form of captcha?

#4

Post by rfw300 »

chaps wrote: post #2

This wouldn't solve anything. To see what I mean, take a screenshot of a random captcha that needs solving and ask an LLM to solve it for you. It will do it accurately.

"Captcha" doesn't refer to any specific type of puzzle, but a class of methods for verifying human users. Some older-style captchas are broken, but some newer ones are not.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time for HN to implement a form of captcha?

#5

Post by rd »

I've always wished there was a "block comments from this user" feature that didn't rely on vibe-coding my own Chrome extension (and thus not work on Safari where I spent at least 50% of my HN time). I imagine it could even work like Sponsorblock does, and we could crowdsource people who's comments are inflammatory.

I've also noticed that very obviously LLM-generated comments are called out, and the community tends to agree, but those that have any plausible deniability are given far too much leniency, and people will over-index on the guidelines to give them the benefit of the doubt.

I don't think a captcha is the solution, as it'll degrade conversation by an OOM though.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time for HN to implement a form of captcha?

#7

Post by rd »

losvedir wrote: post #3

I've been thinking the same. I'm actually building a little site that presents a textarea that you can type your comment into and it will track its changes over time (typing, editing, pasting, etc) and provide a little playback widget so someone can see the composition of the comment. The idea being you can include a link to the playback in your comment that you post here and someone can eyeball it and see if it look…

I don't know why more school districts don't force this for essays. It's so straightforward with Google doc editing history too. And yeah, sure, you can get around it if you _really_ want quite trivially, but I imagine it would solve for 99% of students, and force them to actually engage with whatever AI-generated stuff they inevitably type by hand more than they were before.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time for HN to implement a form of captcha?

#8

Post by fyrn_ »

chaps wrote: post #2

This wouldn't solve anything. To see what I mean, take a screenshot of a random captcha that needs solving and ask an LLM to solve it for you. It will do it accurately.

It _would_ set the bar for a viable bot slightly higher. I'm not sure that's enough to justify it though.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time for HN to implement a form of captcha?

#9

Post by fyrn_ »

rd wrote: post #7
losvedir wrote: post #3

I've been thinking the same. I'm actually building a little site that presents a textarea that you can type your comment into and it will track its changes over time (typing, editing, pasting, etc) and provide a little playback widget so someone can see the composition of the comment. The idea being you can include a link to the playback in your comment that you post here and someone can eyeball it and see if it look…

I don't know why more school districts don't force this for essays. It's so straightforward with Google doc editing history too. And yeah, sure, you can get around it if you _really_ want quite trivially, but I imagine it would solve for 99% of students, and force them to actually engage with whatever AI-generated stuff they inevitably type by hand more than they were before.

Money is more focused on rolling out AI as fast as possible, rather than dealing with the side effects of that.
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