4 ms·
This is like a mental tarpit, where you waste time reading trying to understand what the person is saying only to realize they were a bot and all your effort wa
by veryworried 8y ago
This is like a mental tarpit, where you waste time reading trying to understand what the person is saying only to realize they were a bot and all your effort was for nothing, that is time you will never get back now.
This is a terrifying way to destroy an online community if a person floods it with nonsense content like this.
- ryandrake 8y agoTerrifying -> inevitable. Imagine a botnet full of fake AI users trained with a corpus of legit HN posts. Let them loose commenting on random articles, beginning slowly but ramping up until they’re 99% of all comments. In a few years, the standard Silicon Valley “Growth Hacking” job description will include using AI to deploy fake content to your competitors’ sites, destroying their user community.
- avip 8y agoIs this a future? How much content on twitter/fb is autogenerated, auto-liked and auto-shared?
- Jeff_Brown 8y agoTwo potential solutions: Reputation and a new account fee. Nonsense flooding will make it more difficult for people to establish their identities on a network, but once it's established, they'll be in the clear. If someone has to pay to have their first thread or two reviewed, it will take serious money to flood a site to death. (A similar solution to email spam has been waiting to happen for decades -- charge a fraction of a penny per email, and nobody is harmed but spammers. Maybe allow exceptions for officially recognized organizations that have to send a lot of messages, like political campaigns.)
- richk449 8y agoI was with you until you said you wanted to exempt the politicians. I would charge them double.
- Jeff_Brown 8y agoI share your concern. This would be even better: Email recipients grant free access to whoever they want. A tiny price would be charged only when sending to someone who has not granted such access.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- yeldarb 8y agoI like the idea. Unfortunately, even though snail mail has associated costs I still get a ton of junk.
- droithomme 8y agoI'm positively sure these tactics are already being deployed as a weapon in order to shut down debate of certain inconvenient topics and disrupt problematic communities.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoUgh. Like SV hasn't yet made the internet suck enough...