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User moderation solves this. You’ll know if something is or is not wanted by users, as they will moderate the content itself. There is no need to destroy priva

User moderation solves this. You’ll know if something is or is not wanted by users, as they will moderate the content itself. There is no need to destroy privacy, waste resources, create terrible ux, gate content…

marcinzm 5y ago
Bots will then generate millions of fake users, upvote their own content and downvote all other competing content.
- luffapi 5y ago
  You realize there’s no captchas or fingerprinting on this site right?
  - dmoy 5y ago
    This is an absolutely tiny site. Things that work for small sites fall apart once you get 10~100 million+ people. Look, I help do the actual user moderation for a large (10m+) subreddit, and it is a god damn nightmare. Plus, on top of that, we have to do automated bot detection anyways, because otherwise it's just neverending bot spam.
    - luffapi 5y ago
      I worked on a site with 200M active monthly users. No captchas. It’s totally doable. Reddit is actually a good example of having millions of users with no captcha. They “fixed” their problem with user moderation. You chose to become a moderator, so it must not be that much of a nightmare. EDIT: Reddit does have a captcha now. My guess is it came along with the other users hostile changes in the new design.
      - marcinzm 5y ago
        Reddit does require a captcha and has for a long time. edit: They have for at least the last 6 years based on online questions. Long before the new design.
        luffapi 5y ago
        I see you are correct. They did not used to though.
TwoBit 5y ago
Reddit repost bots execute with full (though unintended) support of moderators and legitimate users.
mike_hearn 5y ago
Users have better things to do than constantly click "report spam" buttons on minor variants of the same content a million times in a row. People see spam reporting as equivalent to filing a complaint i.e. the company failed and they're informing it that it needs to do better. Automation detection and privacy are orthogonal. The ideal bot detector yields a single bit of information: bot or not. It doesn't need to try to de-anonymize users or anything like that. As for UX, well, spam is a bad UX.
- luffapi 5y ago
  There are a million creative ways to solve this that don’t involve dark patterns, poor ux and wasted resources. This comment does a better job than I’ve done explaining: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27664604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27664604
  - mike_hearn 5y ago
    That comment doesn't explain anything. It just says: spam? Remove the incentive. The incentive is money. You can't just wave a magic wand and get rid of the incentive to spam things. Asserting that you can is wishful thinking.
hombre_fatal 5y ago
Users definitely don’t want to be exposed to spam much less have to take action against it.

marcinzm 5y ago

Bots will then generate millions of fake users, upvote their own content and downvote all other competing content.

luffapi 5y ago
You realize there’s no captchas or fingerprinting on this site right?
- dmoy 5y ago
  This is an absolutely tiny site. Things that work for small sites fall apart once you get 10~100 million+ people. Look, I help do the actual user moderation for a large (10m+) subreddit, and it is a god damn nightmare. Plus, on top of that, we have to do automated bot detection anyways, because otherwise it's just neverending bot spam.
  - luffapi 5y ago
    I worked on a site with 200M active monthly users. No captchas. It’s totally doable. Reddit is actually a good example of having millions of users with no captcha. They “fixed” their problem with user moderation. You chose to become a moderator, so it must not be that much of a nightmare. EDIT: Reddit does have a captcha now. My guess is it came along with the other users hostile changes in the new design.
    - marcinzm 5y ago
      Reddit does require a captcha and has for a long time. edit: They have for at least the last 6 years based on online questions. Long before the new design.
      - luffapi 5y ago
        I see you are correct. They did not used to though.

TwoBit 5y ago

Reddit repost bots execute with full (though unintended) support of moderators and legitimate users.

mike_hearn 5y ago

Users have better things to do than constantly click "report spam" buttons on minor variants of the same content a million times in a row. People see spam reporting as equivalent to filing a complaint i.e. the company failed and they're informing it that it needs to do better. Automation detection and privacy are orthogonal. The ideal bot detector yields a single bit of information: bot or not. It doesn't need to try to de-anonymize users or anything like that. As for UX, well, spam is a bad UX.

luffapi 5y ago
There are a million creative ways to solve this that don’t involve dark patterns, poor ux and wasted resources. This comment does a better job than I’ve done explaining: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27664604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27664604
- mike_hearn 5y ago
  That comment doesn't explain anything. It just says: spam? Remove the incentive. The incentive is money. You can't just wave a magic wand and get rid of the incentive to spam things. Asserting that you can is wishful thinking.

hombre_fatal 5y ago

Users definitely don’t want to be exposed to spam much less have to take action against it.