Most people want to avoid looking like AI, ut what if you want to blend in with the robot uprising. I present ⸻ the U+2E3B dash.
The Big Chungus of dashes. Could this be the character that has the widest rendering?!
New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes
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Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes
#42[flagged]
Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes
#43Earlier 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
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Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes
#44I’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.
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Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes
#45— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — Don’t mind me, just skewing the results. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — results. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —…
Haha, the code counts the number of comments with em-dashes and similar, not the number of em-dashes total. Could be an argument made for aggregating by user instead however, if some bots are found to be particularly active and skewing the data.
Don’t —
Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes
#46It's a predictable outcome, and it will get worse. What will/can HN do about it?
One solution is to get rid of anonymity online, enforce validation of identity. Every human only gets 1 account. And then we still ban people that use AI.
Might take a bit but eventually we'll have filtered out all the grifters.
If that's worth the cost... probably not?
Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Haha, the code counts the number of comments with em-dashes and similar, not the number of em-dashes total. Could be an argument made for aggregating by user instead however, if some bots are found to be particularly active and skewing the data.
Don’t —
mind — me.
Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes
#48One 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 to use normal dashes instead of em dashes, type in lowercase, etc., but it's still weirdly formal and formulaic.
For example from https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=snowhale
"this is the underreported second-order risk. Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix all allocated HBM capacity based on hyperscaler capex projections. NAND fabs are similarly committed. a 57% reduction in projected OpenAI spend (.4T -> B) doesn't just affect NVIDIA orders -- it ripples into the memory suppliers who shifted capacity to HBM and away from commodity DRAM/NAND. if multiple hyperscalers revise down simultaneously you get a situation similar to the 2019 crypto ASIC overhang: companies tooled up for demand that evaporated. not predicting that, but the purchasing commitments question is real."
Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes
#49A couple thoughts: (1) I don't recommend focusing disproportionately on one signal. They'll change, and are incredibly easy to optimize for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing (2) I do recommend taking one minute to dash a note off to hn@ycombinator.com if you see suspicious patterns. Dang and our other intrepid mods are preturnatually responsive, and appear to appreciate the extra eyeballs o…
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Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes
#50I'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.