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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

#31

Post by Lucasoato »

skeptic_ai wrote: post #14
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

All will be fixed with real id attestation /s

Not exactly, bot farms can still be made with poor people IDs through black market. I don't know what the solution is going to be, but at some point we might forced to accept the reality that on the internet humans and AI won't be distinguishable anymore and adjust our services independently on the client being a person or a machine.

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

#33

Post by SkyeCA »

If I see an em-dash in a comment I stop reading and I've seriously considered setting up a filter across multiple sites to remove any comments containing one.

I know there are legitimate usecases for the em-dash, but a few paragraphs (at most) of text in an HN/Reddit comment? Into the trash it goes.

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

#34

Post by stego-tech »

I had no idea what I was using were called “EM-dashes” until the AI bubble. I just used them to reflect pauses in my speech for tangents - an old habit from my IRC days.

Incidentally, some folks reported my stuff for potential AI generation and I had to respond to the mods about it. So that was kinda funny, if also sad to hear that some folks thought I was a bot.

I’m a dinosaur, not a robot dinosaur. I’m nowhere near that cool, alas.

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

#35

Post by atourgates »

Shoutout to my English Major comrades who have been using em-dashes forever, and have had to stop so we don't sound like AI.

If AI starts use the New Yorker style diaeresis (umlaut-looking thing when there are two vowels in words like coöperate) I swear I'm gonna lose it.

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

#36

Post by lapcat »

egypturnash wrote: post #6

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — Don’t mind me, just skewing the results. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — results. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —…

The use of em dashes is a human right. I ask that people not discriminate against em-dash users—we should be a protected class—and I refuse to abandon them. Perhaps I’ll have one engraved on my tombstone. He died doing what he loved—dashing.

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

#37

Post by taeric »

homebrewer wrote: post #26
onion2k wrote: post #5

I’ve had this sense that HN has gotten absolutely innundated with bots last few months. Is it possible to differentiate between a bot, and a human using AI to 'improve' the quality of their comment where some of the content might be AI written but not all? I don't think it is.

If you are suspicious, look at comment history. It's usually fairly obvious because all comments made by LLM spambots look the same, have very similar structure and length. Skim ten of them and it becomes pretty clear if the account is genuine. I'm more worried about how many people reply to slop and start arguing with it (usually receiving no replies — the slop machine goes to the next thread instead) when they shou…

This makes me think a tool that lets me know how much of the engagement I was seeing was from bots would be huge.

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

#39

Post by vlovich123 »

egypturnash wrote: post #6

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — Don’t mind me, just skewing the results. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — results. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —…

Wow what boring AI slop

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

#40

Post by marginalia_nu »

mm0lqf wrote: post #13

doesn't really mean anything, Mac randomly autocorrects dashes to em-dashes (caused me a world of pain once when it did that in a GUID in a config file)

Are you saying new accounts are 10x more likely to be using macs? That would be quite a thesis.
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