When did AI take over Hacker News? • Hacker News Board

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#91

Post by epolanski » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 9:07 PM UTC

rising-sky wrote: post #9

What I found insightful about this article was the framing of another article cited. > " This pretty negative post topping Hacker News last month sparked these questions, and I decided to find some answers, of course, using AI" The pretty negative post cited is https://tomrenner.com/posts/llm-inevitabilism/ . I went ahead to read it, and found it, imo, fair. It's not making any direct pretty negative claims about AI,…

I've always found HN's take on AI healthily skeptical.

The only subset where HN gets overly negative is coding, way more than they should.

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#92

Post by jacquesm » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 9:09 PM UTC

insin wrote: post #85

jacquesm wrote: post #29

I'm more annoyed at the - clearly - AI based comments than the articles themselves. The articles are easy to ignore, the comments are a lot harder. In light of that I'd still love it if HN created an ignore feature, I think the community is large enough now that that makes complete sense. It would certainly improve my HN experience.

I added muting and annotating users to my Hacker News extension: https://soitis.dev/comments-owl-for-hacker-news

Neat, worth a try. Thank you!

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#93

Post by wonger_ » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 9:10 PM UTC

paulcole wrote: post #53

jacquesm wrote: post #29

I'm more annoyed at the - clearly - AI based comments than the articles themselves. The articles are easy to ignore, the comments are a lot harder. In light of that I'd still love it if HN created an ignore feature, I think the community is large enough now that that makes complete sense. It would certainly improve my HN experience.

> In light of that I'd still love it if HN created an ignore feature This is why I always think the HN reader apps that people make using the API are some of the stupidest things imaginable. They’re always self-described as “beautifully designed” and “clean” but never have any good features. I would use one and pay for it if it had an ignore feature and the ability to filter out posts and threads based on specific ke…

This one has been convenient for filtering posts: https://tools.simonwillison.net/hacker-news-filtered But not threads

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#94

Post by 1659447091 » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 9:12 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #75

schappim wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You've been here since 2010 and you still don't know you can't downvote someone downthread from you?

I have a theory that a large number of old accounts that were abandoned/not used got taken over at some point and are being used for most AI assisted comments. I just don't care enough to audit the comments of all the users. It was more obvious over the spring with all of the political post and how volatile the voting on comments would be plus other patterns that stuck out

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#95

Post by throw10920 » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 9:14 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #17

rising-sky wrote: post #9

What I found insightful about this article was the framing of another article cited. > " This pretty negative post topping Hacker News last month sparked these questions, and I decided to find some answers, of course, using AI" The pretty negative post cited is https://tomrenner.com/posts/llm-inevitabilism/ . I went ahead to read it, and found it, imo, fair. It's not making any direct pretty negative claims about AI,…

Weird what counts as "negative" on HN. Question something politely? You're being negative. Criticize something? Negative. Describe it in a way someone might interpret badly? Negative. Sometimes it seems like anything that's not breathless, unconditional praise is considered being negative and curmudgeonly. It's turning into a "positive thoughts only" zone.

Part of this is driven by people who have realized that they can undermine others' thinking skills by using the right emotional language.

For instance, in a lot of threads on some new technology or idea, one of the top comments is "I'm amazed by the negativity here on HN. This is a cool and even though it's not perfect we should appreciate the effort the author has put in" - where the other toplevel comments are legitimate technical criticism (usually in a polite manner, no less).

I've seen this same comment, in various flavors, at the top of dozens of HN thread in the past couple of years.

Some of these people are being genuine, but others are literally just engaging in amigdala-hijacking because they want to shut down criticism of something they like, and that contributes to the "everything that isn't gushing positivity is negative" effect that you're seeing.

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#96

Post by b112 » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 9:15 PM UTC

giancarlostoro wrote: post #31

jacquesm wrote: post #29

I'm more annoyed at the - clearly - AI based comments than the articles themselves. The articles are easy to ignore, the comments are a lot harder. In light of that I'd still love it if HN created an ignore feature, I think the community is large enough now that that makes complete sense. It would certainly improve my HN experience.

A little unrelated but the biggest feature I want for HN is to be able to search specifically threads and comments I've favorited / upvoted. I've liked hundreds if not thousands of articles / comments. If I could narrow down my searches to all that content I would be able to find gems of the web a lot easier.

The search is rails, were you being funny with the 'gems' bit?

https://github.com/algolia/hn-search

You can already access all your upvotes in your user page, so this might be an easy patch?

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#97

Post by OnlineGladiator » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 9:16 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #87

nrabulinski wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would generally file questioning and criticism under “neutral”, in some very specific cases “positive” or “negative”. Are you interpreting “negative” as “anything not strictly positive”?

Questions can be neutral but questioning is probably negative, and criticism is solidly negative in my book. So no I am not doing that. In what world does "criticism" not default to "negative"?

Have you never heard of constructive criticism?

https://i.redd.it/s4pxz4eabxh71.jpg

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#98

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 9:16 PM UTC

kzs0 wrote: post #74

mrexroad wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“If you enjoyed the {service}, please rate me 5-Stars, anything less is considered negative poor service” Not sure if part of a broader trend, or a simply reflection of it, but when mentoring/coaching middle and high school aged kids, I’m finding they struggle to accept feedback in anyway other than “I failed.” A few years back, the same age group was more likely to accept and view feedback as an opportunity so long…

I’m relatively young and I noticed this trend in myself and my peers. I wonder if it has to do with the increasingly true fact that if you’re not one of the “best” you’ll be lucky to have some amount of financial stability. The stakes for kids have never been higher, and the pressure for perfection from their parents has similarly never been higher.

[deleted]

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#99

Post by jacquesm » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 9:20 PM UTC

1659447091 wrote: post #94

jacquesm wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've been here since 2010 and you still don't know you can't downvote someone downthread from you?

I have a theory that a large number of old accounts that were abandoned/not used got taken over at some point and are being used for most AI assisted comments. I just don't care enough to audit the comments of all the users. It was more obvious over the spring with all of the political post and how volatile the voting on comments would be plus other patterns that stuck out

That is a good one, and you really may be on to something. I've spotted this as well but didn't connect the dots in the way that you have. One example was an account that was made in 2014 that made one comment that suddenly came alive and started spouting all kinds of bs, others follow similar patterns.

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#100

Post by dsign » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 9:21 PM UTC

This is anecdotal, but the article used ChatGPT to score the sentiment. I’ve noticed that ChatGPT tends to “hallucinate” positive sentiment where there is sufficient nuance but a person would interpret it as overall negative[^1]. I however haven’t tested that bias against more brazen statements.