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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?

#51

Post by tptacek »

lagniappe wrote: post #36
tptacek wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an anti-goal for HN. There are forums that silo themselves in various ways. HN is an experiment in how far you can get without any of those kinds of features, with a single global pool of conversations and participants. That's not to say there's no value in siloing, just that it's specifically not what HN is exploring.

>There are forums that silo themselves in various ways. HN is an experiment in how far you can get without any of those kinds of features, Normally I'd agree, but we have shadowbans, which really irks me.

Only for actual bad actors --- spammers, overt griefers, and people evading bans. A lot of HN's shadowban rep comes from Paul Graham's stewardship of the site (this whole site was a side-hustle of a side-hustle for him) and ignores over a decade of Dan's work professionalizing it.

Almost everyone banned on HN is banned publicly, with a public message explaining why.

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

#52

Post by notherhack »

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…

That extension already exists and works well. “Comments Owl for Hacker News”

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

#53

Post by regnodon »

b112 wrote: post #37

I just realised that one day, an AI moderated board will receive such a post from an AI, not a human. And then a captcha only an AI can solve will appear, and the board will be rid of all "human slop"

But would they still let us read the board though, just not post?

How dystopic. And you're probably right.

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

#54

Post by lagniappe »

tptacek wrote: post #51
lagniappe wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There are forums that silo themselves in various ways. HN is an experiment in how far you can get without any of those kinds of features, Normally I'd agree, but we have shadowbans, which really irks me.

Only for actual bad actors --- spammers, overt griefers, and people evading bans. A lot of HN's shadowban rep comes from Paul Graham's stewardship of the site (this whole site was a side-hustle of a side-hustle for him) and ignores over a decade of Dan's work professionalizing it. Almost everyone banned on HN is banned publicly, with a public message explaining why.

>Almost everyone banned on HN is banned publicly, with a public message explaining why.

I would love for this to be the case, however I quite extensively investigate this phenomenon and this does not match what I've seen. I'd like for us to be better than shadowbans. In some cases, I don't even get to vouch, it's just a comment that is banned-banned. It feels the worst when they're saying something substantive to the conversation and we have no means to surface the comment.

Some type of annual amnesty consideration or something of that nature is in order, or soon we'll recreate other echo chambers that are slowly fading out.

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

#56

Post by regnodon »

iammjm wrote: post #16

> "there is a tremendous amount of attempts by bots, and specifically AI agents, to inject slop into HN threads" Do you have some examples of this? I am on HN almost every day, and I read a lot of comments, and I haven't noticed this

You're right! It's just the flavor of the month (quarter? year?) complaint.

Enslopification is coming for everyone, everywhere, at all times.

Everything is already slop and will be slop, and will have been being slop.

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

#57

Post by tomashubelbauer »

ibejoeb wrote: post #42
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 don't see a many habitual problem accounts. Do you? I guess there was the arguably special case of a certain OS enthusiast...

An account doesn't have to be problematic for you to not want to see their comments. I have several handles in mind where I'd add them to such a list if it were a feature. Nothing against the people in particular, but sometimes when I see a handle (like others said, very often old accounts with high karma), I already know what they will go on about merely just based off the title of the submission and having unintentionally gleaned what topics they usually comment on just by being on HN for a while. It's a waste of time to read those comments, at least for me. Wouldn't hurt them if they lost my attention. I am not bothered by it enough to vibe code a browser extension for it, though. That threshold is a bit higher, I did it for blocking certain domains; there is only so many times I can sit through an article or an "essay" which should have been a podcast.

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

#58

Post by tptacek »

lagniappe wrote: post #54
tptacek wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only for actual bad actors --- spammers, overt griefers, and people evading bans. A lot of HN's shadowban rep comes from Paul Graham's stewardship of the site (this whole site was a side-hustle of a side-hustle for him) and ignores over a decade of Dan's work professionalizing it. Almost everyone banned on HN is banned publicly, with a public message explaining why.

>Almost everyone banned on HN is banned publicly, with a public message explaining why. I would love for this to be the case, however I quite extensively investigate this phenomenon and this does not match what I've seen. I'd like for us to be better than shadowbans. In some cases, I don't even get to vouch, it's just a comment that is banned-banned. It feels the worst when they're saying something substantive to the…

Every time I've looked into it, when you see suddenly and without reason ban-banned after a string of real comments, the backstory has been that it's someone with a track record under other usernames.

At some point, no matter what HN does, being comfortable with its moderation requires you to take Dan's word for things. I take his word for it on shadowbans.

Ironically, I'm irritated with moderation in the other direction: ten years of "if you keep breaking the guidelines under alternate accounts, we'll ban your real account" sort of makes my blood boil (people having long-running alts does that too), but I roll with it, because I couldn't do the job better than Dan and Tom do.

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