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New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

marginalia.nu

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Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#141

Post by lm28469 »

sunaookami wrote: post #59
lm28469 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HN has gotten absolutely innundated with bots last few months. hm, the whole internet really, youtube, reddit, twitter, facebook, blog posts, food recipes, news articles, it's getting more and more obvious

I find the bigger problem with online comments are that people repeat the same comments and "jokes" over and over and over again. Sure we had those with YouTube 15 years ago when people always spammed "first!" and "who is listening in ?" but now it's gotten worse and every single comment is now just some meme (especially on Reddit) or some kind of "gotcha"...

> I find the bigger problem with online comments are that people repeat the same comments and "jokes" over and over and over again.

And bots reposting a trending post from like 12 years ago to farm internet points... with other bots reposting the top comments of the initial post

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#142

Post by embedding-shape »

d4mi3n wrote: post #50

I'm still salty that I can't use em-dashes anymore for fear of my writing being flagged as AI generated. Been using them for years—it's just `alt+shift+-` on a Mac keyboard and I find them more legible in many fonts compared to the simple dash on the typical numpad. It's so sad to me that good typographical conventions have been co-opted by the zeitgeist of LLMs.

People will accuse of all types of stuff, regardless if you use em-dashes or not. The way I write apparently is familiar to some as LLM-jargon they've told me, I'm guessing because I've spewed my views and writings on the internet for decades, the LLMs were trained on the way I write, so actually the LLMs are copying me! And others like me.

But anyways, you can't really control how people see your stuff, if you're human I think the humanness will come through anyways, even if you have some particular structure or happen to use em-dashes sometimes. They're so easy to prompt around anyways, that the real tricky LLM stuff to detect by sense and reading is the stuff where the prompter been trying to sneakily make them more human.

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#143

Post by im3w1l »

doe88 wrote: post #120

I don't understand what is the purpose of these bots? Nihilism? Vandalism? At first I doubted when people were saying that such and such comments was AI generated, I didn't understand the goal, the motives so I thought it couldn't be ; but lately I understood how dead wrong I was, we are submerged, I came to realize that we are eaten by a sea of these useless comments.

The goal is likely to be able to astroturf with aged accounts down the line.

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#144

Post by Aurornis »

mancerayder wrote: post #132
dematz wrote: post #48

One pattern I've noticed recently is sort of formulaic comments that look okish on their own, maybe a bit abstract/vague/bland, and not taking a particular side on good/bad in the way people like to do, but really obviously AI when you look at the account history and they're all the same formula: >this is [summary] >not just x, it's y >punchy ending, maybe question Once you know it's AI it's very obvious they told it…

What motivation is there to use AI to astroturf (if that's what this is) like this? Is it ideological? Is it product marketing in those relevant threads where someone is showcasing? Or is it pure technical testing, playing around?

Some of the AI comments end with a link to something they're plugging. "If you'd like to learn more about this I have a free guide at my website here". Those get flagged quickly.

Other accounts might be trying to age accounts and dilute their eventual coordinated voting or commenting rings. It's harder to identify sockpuppet accounts when they've been dutifully commenting slop for months before they start astroturfing for the chosen topic.

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#145

Post by camdenreslink »

dieselgate wrote: post #137

I get the punchline here but is there possibly some sort of Streisand effect where real people now are more inclined to use an em dash?

I think people are now less inclined to use an em dash, because they don’t want to be mistaken for an LLM.

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#146

Post by duckmysick »

gritzko wrote: post #29
marginalia_nu wrote: post #3

(author) I saw a 32:1 rate of EM-dashes last night when I just eyeballed the first 3 pages of /newcomments and /noobcomments. So I'm not sure how stable this is over over time.

This is probably the time to add some invitation system like GMail had in the beginning. Or make a shade for accounts <1yr. Or something else, before things get too mixed.

https://lobste.rs/ has a system like that.

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#147

Post by basch »

mroche wrote: post #134
basch wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are there really places that a comma, super-comma; or (parenthesis) dont work roughly as well? I find the em-dash mildly abhorrent, even before this all.

> super-comma This is the first time I've ever heard the character ";" referred to as such. It's always been "semi-colon" to me, is this a region/culture difference? I'm not saying you're wrong, I find it interesting.

same character, used differently?

i call it a super comma when its separating a list with commas within the sets.

so if i am listing colors like green, blue, red; foods like apple, orange, strawberry; and seasons like winter, summer, fall.

it's one use case for an em-dash, because whatever you have inside it has commas in the phrase.

square and rectangle situation. a supercomma is a subset of semicolon.

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#149

Post by kakacik »

mancerayder wrote: post #132
dematz wrote: post #48

One pattern I've noticed recently is sort of formulaic comments that look okish on their own, maybe a bit abstract/vague/bland, and not taking a particular side on good/bad in the way people like to do, but really obviously AI when you look at the account history and they're all the same formula: >this is [summary] >not just x, it's y >punchy ending, maybe question Once you know it's AI it's very obvious they told it…

What motivation is there to use AI to astroturf (if that's what this is) like this? Is it ideological? Is it product marketing in those relevant threads where someone is showcasing? Or is it pure technical testing, playing around?

I'd expect everything. HN ain't some local forum but place where opinions form and spread, and these reach many influential and powerful (now or in future) people. Heck there are sometimes major articles in general news about whats happening here.

To reverse the argument - it would be amateurish and plain stupid to ignore it. Barrier to entry is very low. Politics, ads, swaying mildly opinions of some recent clusterfuck by popular megacorp XYZ, just spying on people, you have it all here.

I dont know how dang and crew protects against this, I'd expect some level of success but 100% seems unrealistic. Slow and steady mild infiltration, either by AI bots or humans from GRU and similar orgs who have this literally in their job description.

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#150

Post by usefulposter »

dematz wrote: post #48

One pattern I've noticed recently is sort of formulaic comments that look okish on their own, maybe a bit abstract/vague/bland, and not taking a particular side on good/bad in the way people like to do, but really obviously AI when you look at the account history and they're all the same formula: >this is [summary] >not just x, it's y >punchy ending, maybe question Once you know it's AI it's very obvious they told it…

>snowhale

Oh, would you look at that?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47134072

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