Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI slop is killing online communities

rmoff.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

651–660 of 781 posts

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#651

Post by armchairhacker »

ricardobayes wrote: post #638
CrzyLngPwd wrote: post #55

I run a niche creative community, and we outlawed AI-generated content in 2022 as it was easy to see how corrosive it would be to the community. It hasn't been easy. We ban fake AI accounts daily and shrug off around 600 AI content creator accounts monthly. It's a lot of work, extra work that wasn't needed before AI content came around, and of course, that is an extra cost. I fear losing the battle.

I always find the most difficult is to deal with users who are not actively breaking any rules but are toxic and hurting the conversation. Given your experience, what's your take on handling this?

Ban them. I also recommend making it explicit: your last rule should be “moderators have final discretion”.

The hard part is figuring out when to apply rules leniently or strictly. For example, I think users should always be warned, then given shorter bans, before a long or perma ban (unless they break an obvious egregious rule, or they’re a suspected alt of a banned user). At the same time, you do need to kick out persistent rules lawyerers or they’ll drive away good users.

Moderators shape their community. Hacker News is decent (compared to what it could be) because of dang and tomhow. Many communities (especially on Reddit) have become echo chambers, mainly because the mods are too happy to ban people for unspoken and/or vague rules.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#652

Post by Cyan488 »

spoiler wrote: post #632
21asdffdsa12 wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eagerness.. you let them work through a endless labyrinth of forms. While the human drops out after the 2nd form- the ai is willing to go all the way always.

Don't you lose really users by making it easy for bots to complete a sign up, but hard for humans?

Maybe 5 required fields and 30 optional fields. Apart from "census dweebs" [1] I don't know of many people that fill in more than the required.

[1]: https://thebeaverton.com/2026/05/local-nerd-disappointed-he-...

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#653

Post by armchairhacker »

robotswantdata wrote: post #609
rgblambda wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or applying for an account could involve sending a handwritten letter by post.

Slop as a letter is a thing already https://www.axidraw.com/

If someone buys or makes something like this just to send a letter, they a) put in more human effort than writing it themselves, and b) are probably interesting and would benefit your community.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#654

Post by figassis »

figassis wrote: post #637
CrzyLngPwd wrote: post #55

I run a niche creative community, and we outlawed AI-generated content in 2022 as it was easy to see how corrosive it would be to the community. It hasn't been easy. We ban fake AI accounts daily and shrug off around 600 AI content creator accounts monthly. It's a lot of work, extra work that wasn't needed before AI content came around, and of course, that is an extra cost. I fear losing the battle.

I may have a solution for you and could use some beta testers. Please reach out to me if you don't mind. Info on my profile.

It seems this is getting downvoted, no promotion. Understood, thanks for the reminder.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#655

Post by MSFT_Edging »

anvuong wrote: post #536
alaudet wrote: post #307

The balance is so far out of whack with LLM's now in online communities. People crave human interaction with like minded individuals, and whoever figures out how to give authentic online experiences is going to be successful. Maybe small communities need to come back, where you build credibility slowly. Why does every site have to be a monstrosity that wants to build a hundred million users to IPO. It just attracts t…

I use Blind sometimes to check the TC of a company. Most of the posts/comments there are either stupid, sexist, racist, or all of them. But it does feel like most of them are real. Blind requires verification by company email for posting, which I guess eliminates most of the bots.

Blind is by far the most toxic social media site I've seen that wasn't an outright parody(truth social).

It's a site that thrives on a few crabs being higher in the bucket and bullying the rest. God awful place.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#656

Post by dspillett »

bayindirh wrote: post #626
dspillett wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That ship has sailed long time ago with zealot admins Where there are certainly strong examples of this, a lot of people mistake enforcing the rules as zealotry. Part of the point of SO was that if things don't change then there is a completed state for SO too - no need to ask duplicate questions like on platforms where a post is less long-lived. Unfortunately people take things like “this is a dup”, “provide more…

You're absolutely right. The problem was so small that SO only had to make a site-wide survey, make a couple of public statements, big administrative changes and a big campaign to earn hearts and minds back. Even after that, I still feel sour about the site. Talk about burnt bridges. Moreover, in 2025, 46% of the survey participants told that they don't feel like part of the community. That number was 44% in 2024 [1]…

> don't feel like part of the community

Maybe I'm off because I wasn't there for community, I don't really do the online community thing. I was one of the biggest contributors in terms of answers to a couple of the areas (SU, SF, DBA) in the early days and I liked helping people, but I certainly wasn't there to make friends.

I also don't get on with remote work because I don't feel connected to names and faces on screens in remotely the same way as I do to people in the same room, so like I say maybe my personality missed that part of the problem as it doesn't properly appreciate when things are apparently the other way. Or maybe people were looking for the wrong thing in a technical Q&A site that wasn't, as far as I felt, trying to be a social media site.

For technical questions and to help out with similar answers I'd go to SO, SF, SU, DBA, ... For community: the local, the running club, martial arts, or even sometimes DayJob.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#657

Post by deltoidmaximus »

pojntfx wrote: post #314
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about charging $1 or $5 for an account? Seems like you could stem the tide pretty easily with something like that.

If you head to Twitter right now, the vast majority of bots are blue checks. It seems to actually encourage the opposite, where you trusting that someone paying $8 for an account makes you even more likely to fall for slop

I'm not convinced that twitter is actually trying to get rid of bots. They're OK with boosters/scammers/propaganda/agitation mills, they just want a cut.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#658

Post by mghackerlady »

pocksuppet wrote: post #472
mghackerlady wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the suits or suit minded people have realised that HN is good for advertising to the kind of demographic that'll give them free labour and is easily swayed by whatever the latest trend is

That's why we all love the MIT license.

I think permissive licenses are fine in some cases (particularly if you're trying to standardise something. X11, LLVM, and BSD are good examples), but generally at least weak (LGPL or MPL) copyleft are preferred.

I'm still torn on what kind of license is best for operating systems, though (the GPL has forced companies to actually contribute to Linux but they also try and get around it in so many ways I have to wonder if a weaker license would be better)

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#659

Post by Gigachad »

Flashtoo wrote: post #625
Gigachad wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one point, I was a daily active user of Reddit for 10 years, I deleted my account and left the platform in January over LLM content.

Same, but recently I discussed the LLM flood on Reddit with some friends IRL and they were surprised I had left Reddit, as they simply hadn't noticed significant bot activity. Mind you, these are very AI-aware people. I have little hope that normies will catch on and actually mind enough to leave.

Something I’ve noticed is a lot of Gen Z people just straight up giving up phones and social media lately. Not so much because of AI but just the widespread negative impacts of what the tech has become.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#660

Post by TitaRusell »

CrzyLngPwd wrote: post #55

I run a niche creative community, and we outlawed AI-generated content in 2022 as it was easy to see how corrosive it would be to the community. It hasn't been easy. We ban fake AI accounts daily and shrug off around 600 AI content creator accounts monthly. It's a lot of work, extra work that wasn't needed before AI content came around, and of course, that is an extra cost. I fear losing the battle.

There will soon be a point when you cannot even tell if the post comes from a human or AI model.
Post reply on HN