Thanks for this, this thread has been an eye opener for me.
I found black-hat content marketers: sockpuppet bloggers, fake Reddit/HN accts
141–150 of 259 posts
Re: I found black-hat content marketers: sockpuppet bloggers, fake Reddit/HN accts
#142Eye opening isn't it? Now you can see where most of the stuff on top of HN comes from.
Re: I found black-hat content marketers: sockpuppet bloggers, fake Reddit/HN accts
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
If this isn't black-hat, what is? Specifically, an author not disclosing an affiliation or payment, fake accounts promoting it, and fake accounts commenting on those promotions. In the continuum between white and black, what's left on the black side? :-)
It is more commonly known as Astroturfing
Well, fuck it.
Re: I found black-hat content marketers: sockpuppet bloggers, fake Reddit/HN accts
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's prolific. If you read comments you will have seen it. Question is why only one person has called it ( I can see ) It's not against written HN rules, bots are not allowed in unwritten rules, but is it a bot bot? What more interesting is it's not a ring ( I assume it's upvoted by normal users) They will be hard to detect. This bot could just calm down and fly under the radar and use upvoting and downvoting to cont…
One of the main reasons I read hacker news is the comments. To me they make this site one of the great wonders of the Internet world. Would you mind linking to a few of them that you regard as non-human generated?
I sent you a email.
I just ask you don't pass it on since I think what is more important is people on HN think more about comments. (Or call it themselves)
Its history and upward karma are interesting. I think it's clever in that it anthropomorphizes itself to reduce attack. Next step would be to hint at mental illness.
But it's about comment quality. Blackhat, pretend OpenAI intelligence don't matter. Comments need to speak for themselves.
Re: I found black-hat content marketers: sockpuppet bloggers, fake Reddit/HN accts
#145Eye opening isn't it? Now you can see where most of the stuff on top of HN comes from.
Unless I don't know the first thing about my job (always possible I suppose), that is definitely not true.
Re: I found black-hat content marketers: sockpuppet bloggers, fake Reddit/HN accts
#146So companies pay to get featured everywhere. How is this "black hat"?
That's how the world works, bud.
Re: I found black-hat content marketers: sockpuppet bloggers, fake Reddit/HN accts
#147Social media -- including this site -- is far more manipulated than people even begin to realize. Social media propaganda and sock puppetry is a huge industry.
I'm curious how you think you know that about HN, because if that's true, you know much more about it than I do.
Re: I found black-hat content marketers: sockpuppet bloggers, fake Reddit/HN accts
#148These must be some of those those “sufficiently smart manipulators (SSM)”, whose genius HN’s moderation is so utterly helpless against
We caught those accounts months ago and their patterns were within the range we understand.
I haven't had a chance yet to look at Troy's latest report to see if there's more that needs cleaning up, but that's a question of inbox load, not smartness.
Edit: it would be interesting if anyone found recent submissions by these accounts that made HN's front page. If anyone does, please let me know at hn@ycombinator.com because I'd like to look at whether and why we missed something. HN has anti-abuse measures that do not show up publicly (because we don't want abusers to observe it) that ought to have prevented most if not all of that.
Re: I found black-hat content marketers: sockpuppet bloggers, fake Reddit/HN accts
#149I think the GAN (prob actually not a GAN) that's months old on HN and posts rubbish and gets replys from mods and people and gets lots of karma is much more interesting Imagine what it'd be like if AI wasn't all overhyped garage. Downvoted I guess. Oh, AI that can group think. That would be evil.
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Re: I found black-hat content marketers: sockpuppet bloggers, fake Reddit/HN accts
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Somewhat feasible. You really need distributed fact checking to scale up especially since you don’t have source ips. If you can do that you might have something if you can keep participation up.
Do source ips still help at all? These days it seems to be rather easy to visit a website from numerous different source ips.
I wish they still helped more, but they do still help.