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

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

#21

Post by keyringlight »

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…

One caveat, you might want to account for text that the writer deleted staying deleted/hidden. I'm not always the best at proofreading before submitting, but I'll often cut tangents I'm prone to ramble onto. Accidental pastes from other sources that are meant to stay private would be another issue if the history tracker grabs everything that goes into the text box.

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

#23

Post by imiric »

That is a losing battle.

Even if you manage to make bot usage more expensive, which is all a captcha can do, the content posted by humans in discussions and shared links is increasingly generated by machines.

It's ironic having a community of people object to the same technology they helped build. Enjoy the show, and learn to live with it. It's going to get much worse before it gets any better, if at all.

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

#24

Post by dewey »

This won't work, HN is a high enough value target (Not a random site where bots try to spam some guestbook) that people would adapt to that quickly. Headless browsers, browser extensions, outsourcing captcha solving etc. - there's too many ways to do that if you are determined unless you want to also throw captchas at regular users for every action.

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

#25

Post by pogue »

Do you have some examples of ai slop posts?

There are quite a few third party apps for Hacker News, such as Hacki (ios/android). [1]

Something like using a third party app that includes forms of spam filtering like checking when the user joined, how many posts they have, amount of 'karma' (or whatever it's called here). You could implement blocking individual users & etc etc. This app does not have that but it could be forked and modified or talk to the dev...

That might be a better solution than trying to implement all types of annoying captchas & other extremely annoying checks on HN's side.

[1] https://github.com/Livinglist/Hacki

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

#26

Post by chaps »

rfw300 wrote: post #4
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.

I'm aware. But I'm also aware that breaking these sorts of systems is quite fun for a lot of nerds. So don't expect anything like that to last for any meaningful amount of time.

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

#27

Post by gilrain »

bdcravens wrote: post #18
rfw300 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Since before LLMs were even an issue, there have been services that use overseas workers to solve them, with the going rate about $0.002 per captcha. (and they solve several different types)

This is both true and misleading. It implies captchas aren’t effective due to these services. In practice, though, a good captcha cuts a ton of garbage traffic even though a motivated opponent can pay for circumvention.

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

#29

Post by elashri »

rd wrote: post #5

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…

I have a userscript that takes a list of keywords, domains and user names on HN. I host the json file containing the list on git instance and I use userscript plugin on iOS safari which would support this userscript. This is the lowest friction solution I found that would work on different devices.

I find HN much more tolerable this way.

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

#30

Post by gilrain »

freeplay wrote: post #22

Captcha is only effective at annoying legitimate users. If there is any incentive to do so, bots have no problem bypassing/solving them.

Is this your experience as a sysadmin or a user? As a sysadmin, this is an absurd statement in contradiction of my everyday reality.
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