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Anyone who’s spent any amount of time in this space can spot them pretty quickly/easily. They tend to stick to certain scripts and themes and almost never devia

Anyone who’s spent any amount of time in this space can spot them pretty quickly/easily. They tend to stick to certain scripts and themes and almost never deviate.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
yodon 2y ago
Ten years ago those accounts existed, too. Back then we called them "people."
- JohnMakin 2y ago
  Not at all - ten years ago russian misinformation campaigns on twitter and meta platforms were alive and well. There was an entire several hundred page report about it, even.
diggan 2y ago
How is that different from humans? Humans have themes/areas they care more about, and are more likely to discuss with others. It's not hard to imagine there are Russians/Chinese people caring deeply about their country, just like there are Americans who care deeply about US.
- JohnMakin 2y ago
  C’mon. When you have an account that is less than a year old and has 542 posts, 541 of which are repeating very specific kremlin narratives verbatim, it isn’t difficult to make a guess. Is your contention that they are actually difficult to spot, or that they don’t exist at all? because both of those views are hilariously false.
  - diggan 2y ago
    I feel like you're speaking about specific accounts here, since it's so obvious and exact. Care to share the HN accounts you're thinking about here? My contention is that people jump to "It's just a bot" when they parrot obvious government propaganda they disagree with, when the average person is as likely to parrot obvious propaganda without involving computers at all. People are just generally stupid by themselves, and reducing it to "Robots be robotting" doesn't feel very helpful when there is an actual problem to address.
    - JohnMakin 2y ago
      No, I'm not. And I don't/won't post any specific accounts. I'm speaking more generally - and no one is jumping to anything here, you're projecting an argument that absolutely no one is making. The original claim was that russian/chinese bots were on this platform and left. I've only been here about 1.5 years, so I don't know the validity of that claim, but I have a fair amount of experience and research in the last ten years or so on the topic of foreign misinformation campaigns on the web, so it sounds like a very valid claim, given how proliferate these campaigns were across the entire web. It isn't an entirely new concept or unknown, and that isn't what is happening here. You're making a lot of weird assumptions, especially given the fact that the US government wrote several hundred pages about this exact topic years ago.
      - diggan 2y ago
        > and no one is jumping to anything here, you're projecting an argument that absolutely no one is making You literally claimed "when you have accounts with these stats, and they say these specific things, it isn't difficult to guess..." which ends with "that they're bots" I'm guessing. Read around in this very submission for more examples of people doing "the jump". I'm not saying there isn't any "foreign misinformation campaigns on the web", so not sure who is projecting here.
        JohnMakin 2y ago
        I “literally” did not say that. You seem to be doing the very thing I said, projecting arguments no one is making. Certainly I’m not.
- dcminter 2y ago
  A human aggressively taking a particular line and a bot doing so may be equivalent; do we need to differentiate there?
  - diggan 2y ago
    If the comment is off-topic/breaking the guidelines/rules, it should be removed, full stop. The difference is that the bots comment should be removed regardless if the particular comment is breaking the rules or not, as HN specifically is a forum for humans. The humans comment, granted it doesn't break the rules, shouldn't, no matter how shitty their opinion/view is.
    - dcminter 2y ago
      If posts make HN a less interesting place to converse I don't see why humans should get a pass & I don't see anything in the guidelines to support that view either.
dang 2y ago
In my experience, that's not true. Rather, people are much too quick to jump to the conclusion that so-and-so is a bot (or a troll, a shill, a foreign agent, etc.), when the other's views are outside the range of what feels normal to them. I've written a lot of about this dynamic because it's so fundamental. Here are some of the longer posts (mini essays really): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39158911 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39158911 (Jan 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35932851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35932851 (May 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398725 (June 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 (May 2020) Since HN has many users with different backgrounds from all over the world, it has a lot of user pairs (A, B) where A's views don't seem normal to B and vice versa. This is why we have the following rule, which has held up well over the years: "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- JohnMakin 2y ago
  In my research and experience, it is. I’m making no comment about bots/shills on this site, either, I’m responding to the plausibility of the original comment.
  - diggan 2y ago
    > I’m making no comment about bots/shills on this site, either, I’m responding to the plausibility of the original comment. The original comment: > I wonder the same about HN. Has anyone done this kind of analysis? Me good LLM Slightly disingenuous to argue from the standpoint of "I'm talking about the whole internet" when this thread is specifically about HN. But whatever floats your boat.
- imiric 2y ago
  Hey, I would appreciate if you could address some of my questions here[1]. I do think it's unrealistic to believe that there is absolutely zero bot activity, so at least some of those accusations might be true. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41711060 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41711060

Anyone who’s spent any amount of time in this space can spot them pretty quickly/easily. They tend to stick to certain scripts and themes and almost never deviate.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

yodon 2y ago

Ten years ago those accounts existed, too. Back then we called them "people."

JohnMakin 2y ago
Not at all - ten years ago russian misinformation campaigns on twitter and meta platforms were alive and well. There was an entire several hundred page report about it, even.

diggan 2y ago

How is that different from humans? Humans have themes/areas they care more about, and are more likely to discuss with others. It's not hard to imagine there are Russians/Chinese people caring deeply about their country, just like there are Americans who care deeply about US.

JohnMakin 2y ago
C’mon. When you have an account that is less than a year old and has 542 posts, 541 of which are repeating very specific kremlin narratives verbatim, it isn’t difficult to make a guess. Is your contention that they are actually difficult to spot, or that they don’t exist at all? because both of those views are hilariously false.
- diggan 2y ago
  I feel like you're speaking about specific accounts here, since it's so obvious and exact. Care to share the HN accounts you're thinking about here? My contention is that people jump to "It's just a bot" when they parrot obvious government propaganda they disagree with, when the average person is as likely to parrot obvious propaganda without involving computers at all. People are just generally stupid by themselves, and reducing it to "Robots be robotting" doesn't feel very helpful when there is an actual problem to address.
  - JohnMakin 2y ago
    No, I'm not. And I don't/won't post any specific accounts. I'm speaking more generally - and no one is jumping to anything here, you're projecting an argument that absolutely no one is making. The original claim was that russian/chinese bots were on this platform and left. I've only been here about 1.5 years, so I don't know the validity of that claim, but I have a fair amount of experience and research in the last ten years or so on the topic of foreign misinformation campaigns on the web, so it sounds like a very valid claim, given how proliferate these campaigns were across the entire web. It isn't an entirely new concept or unknown, and that isn't what is happening here. You're making a lot of weird assumptions, especially given the fact that the US government wrote several hundred pages about this exact topic years ago.
    - diggan 2y ago
      > and no one is jumping to anything here, you're projecting an argument that absolutely no one is making You literally claimed "when you have accounts with these stats, and they say these specific things, it isn't difficult to guess..." which ends with "that they're bots" I'm guessing. Read around in this very submission for more examples of people doing "the jump". I'm not saying there isn't any "foreign misinformation campaigns on the web", so not sure who is projecting here.
      - JohnMakin 2y ago
        I “literally” did not say that. You seem to be doing the very thing I said, projecting arguments no one is making. Certainly I’m not.
dcminter 2y ago
A human aggressively taking a particular line and a bot doing so may be equivalent; do we need to differentiate there?
- diggan 2y ago
  If the comment is off-topic/breaking the guidelines/rules, it should be removed, full stop. The difference is that the bots comment should be removed regardless if the particular comment is breaking the rules or not, as HN specifically is a forum for humans. The humans comment, granted it doesn't break the rules, shouldn't, no matter how shitty their opinion/view is.
  - dcminter 2y ago
    If posts make HN a less interesting place to converse I don't see why humans should get a pass & I don't see anything in the guidelines to support that view either.

dang 2y ago

In my experience, that's not true. Rather, people are much too quick to jump to the conclusion that so-and-so is a bot (or a troll, a shill, a foreign agent, etc.), when the other's views are outside the range of what feels normal to them. I've written a lot of about this dynamic because it's so fundamental. Here are some of the longer posts (mini essays really): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39158911 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39158911 (Jan 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35932851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35932851 (May 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398725 (June 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 (May 2020) Since HN has many users with different backgrounds from all over the world, it has a lot of user pairs (A, B) where A's views don't seem normal to B and vice versa. This is why we have the following rule, which has held up well over the years: "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

JohnMakin 2y ago
In my research and experience, it is. I’m making no comment about bots/shills on this site, either, I’m responding to the plausibility of the original comment.
- diggan 2y ago
  > I’m making no comment about bots/shills on this site, either, I’m responding to the plausibility of the original comment. The original comment: > I wonder the same about HN. Has anyone done this kind of analysis? Me good LLM Slightly disingenuous to argue from the standpoint of "I'm talking about the whole internet" when this thread is specifically about HN. But whatever floats your boat.
imiric 2y ago
Hey, I would appreciate if you could address some of my questions here[1]. I do think it's unrealistic to believe that there is absolutely zero bot activity, so at least some of those accusations might be true. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41711060 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41711060