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Kind of suspicious that there are two recent posts with identical titles and text on different accounts: - Ask HN: Is Fortran the first high-level language? 1

Kind of suspicious that there are two recent posts with identical titles and text on different accounts: - Ask HN: Is Fortran the first high-level language? 1 point by zaraz123 2 hours ago | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45395853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45395853 - Ask HN: Is Fortran the first high-level language? 1 point by zoo56 2 hours ago | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45395848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45395848 And that this user makes replies to one of the other accounts above: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=zoo56 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=zoo56 [EDIT] This user seems to have several alt accounts, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Forgret https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Forgret and note that the git repository referenced by that user is also referenced by comments from this user.

codingdave 1y ago
Yeah, such things make me put on my tinfoil hat and be suspicious that bad actors are trying to build up accounts before an election year. But whether or not that is true, you can report suspicious behavior to hn@ycombinator.com
- alexander2002 1y ago
  Wait till you learn how llms search engines (Perplexity looking at you !) give priority to reddit comments and how people are exploiting that.
- PaulHoule 1y ago
  I dunno what the point is. This user is weirdly noisy if you look at the history, directly addressing the moderators at times, etc. Back when I was spamming a site (had no email check so it was easy) to drive traffic for my blog I had a few hundred sock puppet accounts which were all really bland and tried not to stick out and made sure to vote for many other peoole’s blogs randomly so it wouldn’t be obvious that they were part of something. I never got caught and it ended when I lost the database of accounts from a hard drive crash. This guy is getting lots of posts [dead] and still barreling on. If it was some kind of sophisticated influence operation I’d expect them to be more saavy (maybe even keep backups!)

codingdave 1y ago

Yeah, such things make me put on my tinfoil hat and be suspicious that bad actors are trying to build up accounts before an election year. But whether or not that is true, you can report suspicious behavior to hn@ycombinator.com

alexander2002 1y ago
Wait till you learn how llms search engines (Perplexity looking at you !) give priority to reddit comments and how people are exploiting that.
PaulHoule 1y ago
I dunno what the point is. This user is weirdly noisy if you look at the history, directly addressing the moderators at times, etc. Back when I was spamming a site (had no email check so it was easy) to drive traffic for my blog I had a few hundred sock puppet accounts which were all really bland and tried not to stick out and made sure to vote for many other peoole’s blogs randomly so it wouldn’t be obvious that they were part of something. I never got caught and it ended when I lost the database of accounts from a hard drive crash. This guy is getting lots of posts [dead] and still barreling on. If it was some kind of sophisticated influence operation I’d expect them to be more saavy (maybe even keep backups!)