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Was thinking that when I wrote the comment. Unfortunately, spammers have gotten very good at gaming web of trust techniques (see amazon product reviews). This i
by eykanal 2y ago
Was thinking that when I wrote the comment. Unfortunately, spammers have gotten very good at gaming web of trust techniques (see amazon product reviews). This is a Hard Problem™.
- arkh 2y agoInvite only networks were you're responsible for the people you invite à la what.cd : your invitee does something against the rules? They get banned and you get banned.
- onlyfootnotes 2y agolike this idea too!
- ansible 2y agoThat is basically the idea behind https://lobste.rs/ https://lobste.rs/ . There's approximately zero spam or other bad behavior. You can look at the full user tree (https://lobste.rs/users https://lobste.rs/users) and see if there's anyone you know who might be willing to invite you to join.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoVery little spam, but also very little engagement. The same post on hn might have 100 comments and on lobsters it has four.
- bee_rider 2y agoAs long as the growth rate is positive and it isn’t too expensive to host, a small stable growing site could be fine.
- ryandrake 2y agoI think we need to stop using "engagement" as a measurement of anything related to quality and usefulness.
- EasyMark 2y agoQuantity has a quality all of its own.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoSure. But the odds of finding an insightful comment on HN is much higher than finding one on lobsters, merely because there is more content.
- realo 2y agoHey! I have been a good citizen of Hacker News for fourteen years now... Anyone here would want to throw me an invite to lobste.rs? :)
- Multicomp 2y agoHaha that's my line! I would guess that those people who are already on the seafood website know other technical people in their day-to-day workspaces like silicon valley or Palo Alto or wherever, so it's easy for them to get a link. Meanwhile for those of us on the opposite side of the US or, barely in the Anglo-Sphere at all, we are on the outside looking in and are not likely to get a link just by being mostly lurkers and occasional contributors. At least for me, I'm the only HN user I know except my dad who doesn't even post, he just got lurk links from his knee if the woods like hackaday.
- bee_rider 2y agoMaybe some percentage of invitees? I can definitely see the need to disincentivize imprudent inviting, but one mistake is pretty rough. Surely you’ve met somebody in real life who’s revealed themselves as a jerk after initially appearing ok.
- EasyMark 2y agoYep it’s quite easy for a moderately talented spammer to undo the good work of a million people if they have a fast connection and mission to sew chaos and try to make $5