5 ms·

Can you list examples? Or better, report them to the moderators ('Contact' link on the page footer)? I've reported some in the past, months ago, but haven't see

by mtmail 2y ago

Can you list examples? Or better, report them to the moderators ('Contact' link on the page footer)? I've reported some in the past, months ago, but haven't seen any recently.

pona-a 2y ago
Just browsing around right now, I already found these [0] [1] [2], the format is identical to those I've been seeing. This one [0] even seems somewhat successful at blending into a discussion, even getting a human to reply once. I found about 5 of such accounts just today, often several per a new thread. A lot of them operate in eastern time now. At some hours, every third front page post has a few of these. It's surreal to see the dead internet hypothesis come true in real-time. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=oslis https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=oslis [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pljldos https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pljldos [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=whjkh https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=whjkh
- mtmail 2y ago
  Excellent examples. I agree those are very suspicious and a bit more evolved than the ones I found in the past. I'll have a look for those types/patterns of comments in the future, too.
  - pona-a 2y ago
    And... they're gone. While I'm glad it must have gotten someone's attention, hopefully the moderators and not the spammers themselves (does HN allow one to delete 2 day old comments?), now there's no reference point. I pray LLM output detection can get back on track so that this doesn't keep getting worse. It's certainly doable; we humans already spotted a few ones and distilled them into a fuzzy pattern, so a good classifier might have a chance. False positives are a risk, but depending on the spam volume, may be well worth it.
    - pvg 2y ago
      They aren't gone, just banned, turn on 'showdead' in your profile to see them. You can just mail hn@ycombinator.com to get someone's attention, chances are someone did as a result of this post.
runjake 2y ago
There's a bunch here (as I look right now) in the noobcomments section of HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/noobcomments https://news.ycombinator.com/noobcomments One example from this page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41060732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41060732
- gus_massa 2y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41060732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41060732 doesn't look like autogenerated spam. It looks like someone that is not used to HN submitted their project and used a style that is unusual here. Perhaps they are posting the same comment in all aggregators, that is usually a bad idea because echa one has a different public and style.
  - runjake 2y ago
    It appears they edited their comment after I commented. Before, it was boilerplate ChatGPT style.
    - gus_massa 2y ago
      Very strange. Have ypu seen https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41065900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41065900 ?
Suppafly 2y ago
> report them to the moderators I find it hard to believe that any active moderators don't already know about it. Every thread here recently has a ton of grayed out, often spammy, comments at the bottom that should really have the posters banned.
- ofalkaed 2y ago
  Much of the moderation on HN is by the community through flagging and voting, the mods can not possibly read every single comment. Overall it works pretty good and having a bunch of grayed out comments at the bottom of a thread is hardly a problem. The examples given above show the users responsible are limiting their posting to once a day or so probably to evade triggering any automated warnings that would get the mods attention, so it is up to the community to report them. Not that a ban is going to accomplish much, pretty easy to setup a new account.

by mtmail 2y ago

Can you list examples? Or better, report them to the moderators ('Contact' link on the page footer)? I've reported some in the past, months ago, but haven't seen any recently.

pona-a 2y ago

Just browsing around right now, I already found these [0] [1] [2], the format is identical to those I've been seeing. This one [0] even seems somewhat successful at blending into a discussion, even getting a human to reply once. I found about 5 of such accounts just today, often several per a new thread. A lot of them operate in eastern time now. At some hours, every third front page post has a few of these. It's surreal to see the dead internet hypothesis come true in real-time. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=oslis https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=oslis [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pljldos https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pljldos [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=whjkh https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=whjkh

mtmail 2y ago
Excellent examples. I agree those are very suspicious and a bit more evolved than the ones I found in the past. I'll have a look for those types/patterns of comments in the future, too.
- pona-a 2y ago
  And... they're gone. While I'm glad it must have gotten someone's attention, hopefully the moderators and not the spammers themselves (does HN allow one to delete 2 day old comments?), now there's no reference point. I pray LLM output detection can get back on track so that this doesn't keep getting worse. It's certainly doable; we humans already spotted a few ones and distilled them into a fuzzy pattern, so a good classifier might have a chance. False positives are a risk, but depending on the spam volume, may be well worth it.
  - pvg 2y ago
    They aren't gone, just banned, turn on 'showdead' in your profile to see them. You can just mail hn@ycombinator.com to get someone's attention, chances are someone did as a result of this post.

runjake 2y ago

There's a bunch here (as I look right now) in the noobcomments section of HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/noobcomments https://news.ycombinator.com/noobcomments One example from this page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41060732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41060732

gus_massa 2y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41060732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41060732 doesn't look like autogenerated spam. It looks like someone that is not used to HN submitted their project and used a style that is unusual here. Perhaps they are posting the same comment in all aggregators, that is usually a bad idea because echa one has a different public and style.
- runjake 2y ago
  It appears they edited their comment after I commented. Before, it was boilerplate ChatGPT style.
  - gus_massa 2y ago
    Very strange. Have ypu seen https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41065900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41065900 ?

Suppafly 2y ago

> report them to the moderators I find it hard to believe that any active moderators don't already know about it. Every thread here recently has a ton of grayed out, often spammy, comments at the bottom that should really have the posters banned.

ofalkaed 2y ago
Much of the moderation on HN is by the community through flagging and voting, the mods can not possibly read every single comment. Overall it works pretty good and having a bunch of grayed out comments at the bottom of a thread is hardly a problem. The examples given above show the users responsible are limiting their posting to once a day or so probably to evade triggering any automated warnings that would get the mods attention, so it is up to the community to report them. Not that a ban is going to accomplish much, pretty easy to setup a new account.