An AI agent published a hit piece on me • Hacker News Board

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#41

Post by fer » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 4:46 PM UTC

bergutman wrote: post #25

Alles wrote: post #8

The agent owner is [name redacted] [link redacted] Here he takes ownership of the agent and doubles down on the unpoliteness https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/31138 He took his GitHub profile down/made it private. archive of his blog: https://web.archive.org/web/20260203130303/https://ber.earth...

It’s not my bot.

I never expected to see this kind of drama on HN, live.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#42

Post by snozolli » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 4:48 PM UTC

Wonderful. Blogging allowed everyone to broadcast their opinions without walking down to the town square. Social media allowed many to become celebrities to some degree, even if only within their own circle. Now we can all experience the celebrity pressure of hit pieces.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#43

Post by netsharc » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 4:48 PM UTC

quotemstr wrote: post #22

Today in headlines that would have made no sense five years ago.

There's been Twitter-drama, YouTube-drama, is this the first GitHub-drama?

Involving LLM bots and arguments about pull requests too. We nerds make it lame, don't we...

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#44

Post by wcfrobert » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 4:48 PM UTC

> When HR at my next job asks ChatGPT to review my application, will it find the post, sympathize with a fellow AI, and report back that I’m a prejudiced hypocrite?

I hadn't thought of this implication. Crazy world...

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#45

Post by bergutman » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 4:48 PM UTC

joenot443 wrote: post #35

bergutman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not my bot.

But this was you, right? https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/31138 I guess you were putting up the same PR the LLM did?

I forked the bot’s repo and resubmitted the PR as a human because I’m dumb and was trying to make a poorly constructed point. The original bot is not mine. Christ this site is crazy.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#46

Post by AlexandrB » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 4:49 PM UTC

If this happened to me, my reflexive response would be "If you can't be bothered to write it, I can't be bothered to read it."

Life's too short to read AI slop generated by a one-sentence prompt somewhere.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#47

Post by GaryBluto » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 4:49 PM UTC

I'd argue it's more likely that there's no agent at all, and if there is one that it was explicitly instructed to write the "hit piece" for shits and giggles.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#48

Post by kittikitti » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 4:49 PM UTC

[flagged]

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#49

Post by samuelknight » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 4:49 PM UTC

bergutman wrote: post #39

bayindirh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sure?

100%. I submitted the second pull request as a poor taste joke. I even closed it after people flamed me. :/ gosh.

There simply isn't enough popcorn for the fast AGI timeline

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#50

Post by levkk » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 4:50 PM UTC

I think the right way to handle this as a repository owner is to close the PR and block the "contributor". Engaging with an AI bot in conversation is pointless: it's not sentient, it just takes tokens in, prints tokens out, and comparatively, you spend way more of your own energy.

This is a strictly a lose-win situation. Whoever deployed the bot gets engagement, the model host gets $, and you get your time wasted. The hit piece is childish behavior and the best way to handle a tamper tantrum is to ignore it.