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Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts

shkspr.mobi

21–30 of 83 posts

Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts

#21

I also see a ton of this here on HN as the political topics have ramped up. Not enough people are flagging those when it aligns with their bias. It's even less likely to get flagged when it's a double whammy of politics and AI. Loosely being about AI should not give it a free pass.

I rarely downvote anything; but I’ll unholster the downvote for obvious political spam when it agrees with me.

If we don’t police our side nobody will.

Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts

#22

This also is absolutely rampant on reddit in the past months.

I’m not a heavy Reddit user but I’ve noticed a sharp increase in comment spam disguised as real discussion. I think the turning point was when they allowed accounts to hide their comment history. Before, when you could click on an account and read all of their other comments it was easy to tell when an account only existed for fake conversations about a product they were spamming. Now the spam accounts hide their com…

It's interesting that people are concerned about seeing ads in ChatGPT when it will happily regurgitate astroturf from Reddit right now

Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts

#23
post #3

I subscribe to handful of investment-related YouTube channels. This pattern has been common for years. A bot will reply with a comment loosely related to the video and about how something worked for them. Another bot will reply asking how they did that. Another bot (not the original commenter) will reply that they worked with so-and-so or invested in such-and-such, and then there will be maybe four or five more comme…

Yes and what they do is use actual registered investment advisors names and set up scam websites for them. This way it's more legitimate because if you research that person you will find that they are actually registered in official databases.

Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts

#24
post #20

I also see a ton of this here on HN as the political topics have ramped up. Not enough people are flagging those when it aligns with their bias. It's even less likely to get flagged when it's a double whammy of politics and AI. Loosely being about AI should not give it a free pass.

I haven't seen this. Can you give some examples?

Oh you definitely have seen it

Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also talk like people in a national ad. “Wow! Seems like it’s so easy to change over with savings like that!”

The bad ones seem like this, the scary part is not knowing if there are good ones

Generally when people start having a back and forth about a product I assume it’s astroturfing unless it makes sense in context and/or it’s just one of those brands people genuinely get excited about (they tend to be obvious ones you’ve seen a lot already).

Doesn’t mean I don’t ever get duped, but idk. You learn to spot the signs. I imagine most of us on HN catch most instances. Genuine-seeming referrals aren’t as easy to fake as one would think.

Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts

#28

This also is absolutely rampant on reddit in the past months.

https://old.reddit.com/r/self/comments/1s3yscz/how_reddit_us...

There must be some element of reddit turning a blind eye to this/trying to push it into their sales funnel for the paid reddit marketing features.

Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts

#30
post #15
post #3

I subscribe to handful of investment-related YouTube channels. This pattern has been common for years. A bot will reply with a comment loosely related to the video and about how something worked for them. Another bot will reply asking how they did that. Another bot (not the original commenter) will reply that they worked with so-and-so or invested in such-and-such, and then there will be maybe four or five more comme…

It's been well know to happen on reddit too for many years. Whole posts and comment threads copied verbatim with new accounts. Nowadays with AI you can make it way more dynamic.

> It's been well know to happen on reddit too for many years

"For many years" being around 20 years at this point. Not sure reddit is a great example, given the founders admitted to using sockpuppets almost since day 1 in order to generate fake activity on the platform.

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