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

news.ycombinator.com

61–70 of 150 posts

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

#61

We've always wanted to build a service which provides authentication through credit score verification. Whether its applied to dating apps, product review sites, HN. I'd sure love to filter by 650+ only. I'm certain it's illegal but it sure would help.

The rest of the world thank you for not including us. Also, this leads to the dystopian way where you loose all your access based on someone stealing your details and you have no way of fighting it off.

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

#62
post #30

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.

There are dozens, if not far more, of captcha solver API's for extremely cheap. Captcha is very shallow bot "security" theater, they just deter the cheapest attempts.

latest greatest versions of captcha are more resilient to these types of services, but it's a cat and mouse game. I would recommend that you, as a sysadmin, learn at least the most basic things about this stuff.

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

#63

We've always wanted to build a service which provides authentication through credit score verification. Whether its applied to dating apps, product review sites, HN. I'd sure love to filter by 650+ only. I'm certain it's illegal but it sure would help.

Hell yes! Not just a social credit score, but one that permanently locks in/enforces a class system. Tech bros even manage to enshittify social credit scores to be even more shitty. Amazing work.

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

#65
post #51

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.

They're also shadow banning/silently disabling your votes, and they will not inform you about this. You think you're voting on stories or comments, but you aren't if they perceive your behavior as "upvote too many flamewar comments, culture-war/ideological battle comments, or otherwise low-quality comments for HN" and "if a user has a track record of upvoting comments that break the guidelines and/or downvoting good comments, or voting in ways that seem unfair – e.g., voting based on political side or personal acrimony, rather than on the objective merits of the comment itself".

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

#66
post #65
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.

They're also shadow banning/silently disabling your votes, and they will not inform you about this. You think you're voting on stories or comments, but you aren't if they perceive your behavior as "upvote too many flamewar comments, culture-war/ideological battle comments, or otherwise low-quality comments for HN" and "if a user has a track record of upvoting comments that break the guidelines and/or downvoting good…

This seems like an especially silly complaint on a site that is clear on the label about votes being just one of many signals deciding placement on pages and threads. We've known since 2008 that the HN experiment doesn't work if it runs off raw votes; you just get a front page full of memes.

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

#67
post #66
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're also shadow banning/silently disabling your votes, and they will not inform you about this. You think you're voting on stories or comments, but you aren't if they perceive your behavior as "upvote too many flamewar comments, culture-war/ideological battle comments, or otherwise low-quality comments for HN" and "if a user has a track record of upvoting comments that break the guidelines and/or downvoting good…

This seems like an especially silly complaint on a site that is clear on the label about votes being just one of many signals deciding placement on pages and threads. We've known since 2008 that the HN experiment doesn't work if it runs off raw votes; you just get a front page full of memes.

If this were clearly public (like written in the rules) then maybe it wouldn't be worth mentioning. But if it isn't, it's good for people to know, so they understand how their voting habits can affect whether their votes count, right? That's why I mentioned it.

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

#69

Posts like this should just implement the poll feature. You'll have your answer in 24h. Then go and quibble with your data. https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll

A preliminary discussion is more efficacious than polling uniformed users.

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

#70
post #23

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.

> " they helped build " The overwhelming majority of developers have never worked anywhere close to LLM tech. AI is a very small field requiring specialized expertise.

I agree, having never worked on AI or anything privacy invasive for that matter. HN is not a monolith.
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