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Don't discount better and better "I can't believe it's not human" aping behaviour of personal bot armies of HN accounts - there's clear and obvious spam green a

by defrost 11mo ago

Don't discount better and better "I can't believe it's not human" aping behaviour of personal bot armies of HN accounts - there's clear and obvious spam green accounts, and a steady drip of bland comment, weird voting behaviour, biege textual tone accounts that evolve through green and into background noise. The admins potter about classifying coarse behaviour and looking to reject spam, voting blocs, overly weird AI comments, etc. The creators make their bot accounts less obvious with random votes, etc.

fsckboy 11mo ago
what's green mean, new?
- defrost 11mo ago
  Comments made by recent accounts appear with green names until a grace period passes. HN prefers "legit accounts" (subjective) - good faith comments from real people, reasonable uses of alias and spun up fresh accounts for regulars to say things without being part of their main history, etc. New commenters welcome. There are obvious and less obvious dark patterns of bad faith account creation. The admins do a pretty decent job, sweeping cobwebs without hitting real genuine people is an artform ... Returning to the main GP point - there's a lot of low key background churn activity that can result in "inexplicatable" votes, some from bots and some from the general case of "people are strange".
  - fsckboy 11mo ago
    >Comments made by recent accounts appear with green names until a grace period passes. on HN? huh, i've never seen that (and i'm no spring chicken)
    - swores 11mo ago
      If you see my message quickly enough (I can't remember how long the green lasts, so not sure when the deadline is for this example), here's the most recent green I saw to give you an example: jonathan7977, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46264260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46264260 (linked directly to their comment but it shows green on the main thread also - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46263317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46263317)
    - sejje 11mo ago
      I see them every day. A lot of them I only see because I have "showdead" turned on.

by defrost 11mo ago

fsckboy 11mo ago

what's green mean, new?

defrost 11mo ago
Comments made by recent accounts appear with green names until a grace period passes. HN prefers "legit accounts" (subjective) - good faith comments from real people, reasonable uses of alias and spun up fresh accounts for regulars to say things without being part of their main history, etc. New commenters welcome. There are obvious and less obvious dark patterns of bad faith account creation. The admins do a pretty decent job, sweeping cobwebs without hitting real genuine people is an artform ... Returning to the main GP point - there's a lot of low key background churn activity that can result in "inexplicatable" votes, some from bots and some from the general case of "people are strange".
- fsckboy 11mo ago
  >Comments made by recent accounts appear with green names until a grace period passes. on HN? huh, i've never seen that (and i'm no spring chicken)
  - swores 11mo ago
    If you see my message quickly enough (I can't remember how long the green lasts, so not sure when the deadline is for this example), here's the most recent green I saw to give you an example: jonathan7977, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46264260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46264260 (linked directly to their comment but it shows green on the main thread also - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46263317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46263317)
  - sejje 11mo ago
    I see them every day. A lot of them I only see because I have "showdead" turned on.