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Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

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Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#451
post #443
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a prominent AMA for an israeli soldier while stationed in Gaza oppressing brown minorities and blowing up their children. The world sees what Israel has done it's not an "online" thing there are real humanitarian orgs and the UN accusing Israel of genocide.

Can you share a link or any identifying words that would enable us to know exactly what you're referring to? Dang and I monitor this site throughout the day, every day, and we have no idea what you mean. If it was a "prominent AMA" that we "hosted", we would remember.

It was on the front page(I want to say the January after Oct 7), and has since been scrubbed along with the many comments I made on it.

Here is me referencing it about 11 months ago and I have older comments that reference it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44864419#44866331

I guess HN likes to scrub things that make them look bad instead of confronting the reality that they helped launder and "humanize" genocide.

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#452
post #443
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a prominent AMA for an israeli soldier while stationed in Gaza oppressing brown minorities and blowing up their children. The world sees what Israel has done it's not an "online" thing there are real humanitarian orgs and the UN accusing Israel of genocide.

Can you share a link or any identifying words that would enable us to know exactly what you're referring to? Dang and I monitor this site throughout the day, every day, and we have no idea what you mean. If it was a "prominent AMA" that we "hosted", we would remember.

Also, the mods were heavily in the thread and flagged most of my comments calling the soldier a war criminal. I wonder how many ex-IDF have worked at ycombinator companies.

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#453

1. because your belief that AI-generated text is worse than human written text is flat out illogical and wrong. 2. judge content not by its cover and think.

I do not have unlimited time. If enough of this community flags an article as low caliber AI, that is useful to me. The whole idea of a site like this is that the community IS judging the content at some level to up/down vote.

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This exactly. Whenever someone shows me their (or someone else's) AI-assisted-coded (vibe coded) thing, I can only ever engage with it on a very superficial level, saying "oh cool". You can't have a discussion about it, how it was done, because for 80% of cases it's "the AI did it". I don't think this is that interesting or useful for HN, because indeed it's a discussion site. It would be different if the vibe coded…

This is becoming a problem on the anti-HN (reddit). Someone will submit something cool, not disclose its status as vibecoded, and then not be able to answer any real questions about whatever it is they submitted. I don't have a problem with vibe coded software in general, but I think sharing it like that is strange. What do these people get from it? Prestige? I don't think they get any, as it's almost always clocked…

This occurred on HN as well. It's not just Reddit-coded

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#455
post #451
post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share a link or any identifying words that would enable us to know exactly what you're referring to? Dang and I monitor this site throughout the day, every day, and we have no idea what you mean. If it was a "prominent AMA" that we "hosted", we would remember.

It was on the front page(I want to say the January after Oct 7), and has since been scrubbed along with the many comments I made on it. Here is me referencing it about 11 months ago and I have older comments that reference it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44864419#44866331 I guess HN likes to scrub things that make them look bad instead of confronting the reality that they helped launder and "humanize" genoci…

I'm not sure how it's plausible that we would (1) want to host something like what you're describing, and then (2) completely scrub it and pretend it never happened.

We don't ever delete anything from HN (except in rare cases where a user asks us to do so for privacy reasons). If we had deleted something as controversial/inflammatory as what you're claiming, it would easily be exposed; the HN API is public and many people ingest and store everything that is posted, so someone would have a record of it and could easily dig it up. That's aside from any cached copies in The Internet Archive, any screenshots of it, any tweets about it, etc. We never even consider trying to hide anything that's happened on HN, because it would so easily be exposed if we did. If something bad happens on HN, we own it and work to improve.

Edit:

The thread you must be referring to is this, in January 2024:

ICJ orders Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza, stops short of ordering ceasefire - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39143043 - Jan 2024 (1401 comments)

This comment, which appears near the bottom of the thread, is from someone identifying as an IDF soldier and sharing their perspective: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39147721. That user posted 9 comments in a thread with 1401 comments. Most of the replies to them were hostile but attracted no moderator action. Some of your replies attracted user flags and comments from dang due to breaking the guidelines. This is routine moderation. The guidelines apply, regardless of the topic; otherwise there would be no point having guidelines, and we'd never be able to have discussions about any difficult topics at all.

The main topic and the overwhelming majority of comments in the thread were critical of the IDF.

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#457
post #452
post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share a link or any identifying words that would enable us to know exactly what you're referring to? Dang and I monitor this site throughout the day, every day, and we have no idea what you mean. If it was a "prominent AMA" that we "hosted", we would remember.

Also, the mods were heavily in the thread and flagged most of my comments calling the soldier a war criminal. I wonder how many ex-IDF have worked at ycombinator companies.

The guidelines apply regardless of the topic, and regardless of who you're replying to. There's no point having guidelines if we only apply them in cases where it's popular.

For the record, this is the comment that dang replied to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39158222.

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you’re in the wrong place (community, thread, or what have you). Said another way: I couldn’t disagree more.

I'm not trying to be edgy or intentionally controversial or something, it's just life. Most things people have to say are not interesting. Not everything written on HN can be exceptional, because by definition it wouldn't be the exception. Your comment right now, and mine above are not interesting! In another thread there might be one whole comment out of hundreds that retells the experience of a senior engineer work…

They’re interesting to me, (or I wouldn’t be spending time on them), and they’re interesting because I expect to care about this specific community behind this specific domain in five or ten, same as I did five or ten ago.

You may be more ephemeral with your community identities. That’s cool, too.

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