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Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts

shkspr.mobi

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Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts

#71

Post by bombcar »

mschuster91 wrote: post #60
bombcar wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rarely downvote anything; but I’ll unholster the downvote for obvious political spam when it agrees with me . If we don’t police our side nobody will.

> If we don’t police our side nobody will. The problem is, the other side definitely does not play by the rules and has no intention to. Why should we "police our side" and weaken ourselves? The endless purity testing on the progressive side of politics is a large part of why the far-right is so damn powerful worldwide.

It's not purity testing insofar as "you must support X if you support Y" but "we don't spam" purity testing.

And yes, nobody is going to do it, all politicians understand and support them spamming.

Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts

#72

Post by armchairhacker »

ultratalk wrote: post #51
jerf wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI has been awful on Reddit. I've acquired a sense for at least some of the bots. There's this set of bots that post a high-engagement post about once a day to an implausibly large range of subreddits, with implausible regularity. I can tell by the way I remove them and the way that the other subs are mostly not that most subs have not figured this out yet. There is an obvious solution to that problem, which I haven'…

Out of curiosity, has anyone noticed a non-negligible presence of bots in threads on HN? I haven't, but I'm not sure if that's because I'm bad at spotting them or because HN is good at getting rid of them or because HN is a niche platform.

Yes, they’re very identifiable. New or resurrected account makes multi-paragraph comments on random topics with “insights” that read like AI, even if they don’t have em-dashes or “it’s not X it’s Y” (and sometimes they do).

Fortunately and in fairness to this site, they’ve become rarer, and most seem to be flagged within hours. Usually I look at the comments to confirm, and most are already dead.

Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts

#73

Post by brazukadev »

armchairhacker wrote: post #72
ultratalk wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, has anyone noticed a non-negligible presence of bots in threads on HN? I haven't, but I'm not sure if that's because I'm bad at spotting them or because HN is good at getting rid of them or because HN is a niche platform.

Yes, they’re very identifiable. New or resurrected account makes multi-paragraph comments on random topics with “insights” that read like AI, even if they don’t have em-dashes or “it’s not X it’s Y” (and sometimes they do). Fortunately and in fairness to this site, they’ve become rarer, and most seem to be flagged within hours. Usually I look at the comments to confirm, and most are already dead.

> Yes, they’re very identifiable.

It is safe to assume that you missed the ones that are not identifiable.

Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts

#74

Post by armchairhacker »

xyzal wrote: post #26

Text generation is now cheap, so I expect this problem to worsen. I hate to write it, but I don't see any other solution on platforms, that aspire to be a modern agora, than identity verification ...

A better solution is web-of-trust

Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts

#75

Post by PaulHoule »

keybored wrote: post #55
PaulHoule wrote: post #49

"Remember, there are no technological solutions to social problems." is something I want to counterpoint with "there are no social solutions to technological problems", like how the looming situation pointed out by the Club of Rome in 1973 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth would be difficult enough to solve in a socially cohesive society run by philosopher kings. Practically you have a choice between…

Yeah, I’ve heard that there is some very axiomatic math to being anti-democratic for some reason. Unlike the mathematically sound benevolent and also omniscient philosopher kings.

It is a wicked problem that composes with other wicked problems to pose a wicked problem of a higher order.

Habermas in

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimation_Crisis_(book)

makes it clear you need expert decision making and democratic participation and without them no system is sustainable. Yet these can't really be reconciled: the public often doesn't know enough to have a worthwhile opinion.

The last defense of democracy is Winston Churchill's "democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried." What it promises is that you can depose bad leaders in an orderly way, not have good leadership. But today it fails to do even that and people are craving good leadership. In the US today it is not "make the trains run on time" but it is having trains at all -- so Xi's China can look a little appealing to some people, even myself on a bad day although I know better.

The argument that Trump represents a threat to democracy doesn't motivate most people in the US because our democracy lacks output legitimacy, whether it is really bad as people think it is an open question in my mind (I'm lucky enough to be a homeowner) but you just can't sell people on it -- the Schoolhouse Rock song and dance about How a bill becomes a law looks like tangled-up proceduralism and the last scene in the The Parallax View where a murdered politician careens on a golf cart through tables on the floor of a conference center is more how it feels

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1OmcMDFR0Y

It's easy to say that the path to Eudaimonia today would involve ignoring politics but Nader and Pericles would agree that "If you're not turned on to politics, then politics will turn on you"

Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts

#76

Post by armchairhacker »

mschuster91 wrote: post #60
bombcar wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rarely downvote anything; but I’ll unholster the downvote for obvious political spam when it agrees with me . If we don’t police our side nobody will.

> If we don’t police our side nobody will. The problem is, the other side definitely does not play by the rules and has no intention to. Why should we "police our side" and weaken ourselves? The endless purity testing on the progressive side of politics is a large part of why the far-right is so damn powerful worldwide.

Ironically purity testing is something we should police.

We police ourselves because it makes us look better to moderates and defectors as the other side fails to fulfill its promises.

If the other side doesn’t police themselves, it’s their loss, because they’ll alienate fence-sitters and (mispredicting due to groupthink) fail even harder.

Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts

#77

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

chorkpop wrote: post #38
jerf wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI has been awful on Reddit. I've acquired a sense for at least some of the bots. There's this set of bots that post a high-engagement post about once a day to an implausibly large range of subreddits, with implausible regularity. I can tell by the way I remove them and the way that the other subs are mostly not that most subs have not figured this out yet. There is an obvious solution to that problem, which I haven'…

Considering reddit now allows you to hide your post history, I don't know if the admins consider bots to be the giant problem that they certainly are.

Reddit has a P/E ratio higher than Nvidia. Go ahead and think about that for a little while and then try and explain it with anything other than their value is being a bot-driven propaganda-pushing device for sale.

Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts

#78

Post by jerf »

brazukadev wrote: post #73
armchairhacker wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they’re very identifiable. New or resurrected account makes multi-paragraph comments on random topics with “insights” that read like AI, even if they don’t have em-dashes or “it’s not X it’s Y” (and sometimes they do). Fortunately and in fairness to this site, they’ve become rarer, and most seem to be flagged within hours. Usually I look at the comments to confirm, and most are already dead.

> Yes, they’re very identifiable. It is safe to assume that you missed the ones that are not identifiable.

That's the part that bothers me, definitely.

Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts

#79

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

bachmeier wrote: post #69
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m putting together an AI presentation internally for my company, can anyone point to examples of this exact behavior? I’d like to use it as a reference.

Just go to a popular YouTube retirement channel and check the comments on a new video. For instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Awtflo0cU4o Most of the creators delete those comments, but if you get in early, you'll see them.

Thanks! I think I found one in that link.

@DeniseJ.Wilson 6 hours ago I believe that a 'hard economy' is actually the best time to build if you have discipline and the right strategy. Most people spend their time complaining, but I believe in execution over excuses. I made a smart move in early 2026, and because I believe in staying the course, I just hit $1M. The momentum is still building, and by the end of this year, it’s going to be massive.

And the replies start talking about a Coach Julia out of no where. To search set up an apt.

Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts

#80

Post by xyzal »

mschuster91 wrote: post #59
jancsika wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're probably close to the point for social networks where authenticity/transparency is more valuable than network effect. You could probably have a workable social network just with the following properties: 1. Use combination of digital friend-of-a-friend invite chains as well as sign-ups at physical 3rd spaces to build out the social network 2. If a user's account is found to be abusing the network, kick the user…

Anonymity is valuable on the Internet, particularly when it comes to contentious political topics (think Israel/Palestine, Trump, ...). We already "self censor" ourselves with "algospeak" [1], I'm not too fond of forcibly breaking anonymity even more than that, especially not by private companies. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algospeak

I think there should be venues to speak anonymously, just not places where large-scale political discussion takes place.
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