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I had a very interesting discussion with a friend today, where I was talking to her about the /r/golang thread about Rob Pike's comments to OpenAI and how the t

I had a very interesting discussion with a friend today, where I was talking to her about the /r/golang thread about Rob Pike's comments to OpenAI and how the thread was full of bots talking with other bots. No idea why the density of bots was so high in that thread, it was kind of absurd to see. Then she said: "I know nobody that comments on online forums. Nobody would ever comment to strangers on the internet. It's too dangerous." Took me a while to grasp what she meant with that, but I think she's right. Trust has eroded so much over the last two decades that most forums are either full of bots or full of annoyed and toxic people. It's very rare to find welcoming communities to newbies, and most of the ones I have discovered were offline connections. She also mentioned that all of her friends use private profiles only, because having public profiles is too dangerous because of stalkers. To me this sounded a bit absurd at first, but maybe that's a different perception on "how to use" the internet from a different younger generation that grew up post-socialmedia? My first contact with the internet was MIT opencourseware, her first contact was receiving dick pics at the age of 10 from assholes on the other side of the planet. I miss the old phpbb forum days when the most toxic comment was someone being snarky and derailing the discussion into "did you use the search function?" No idea how to fix the internet, maybe it's time to move to gopher or another protocol :-/

mgaunard 10mo ago
They don't write on forums but they like or share a story. It's just more passive/consumer-minded.
chrchr 10mo ago
But your friend is wrong. She does know at least one person who comments on online forums. I bet she knows more too.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- misiti3780 10mo ago
  exactly!
- baobun 10mo ago
  Don't ask don't tell.
- schuylerlarson 10mo ago
  Completely agree. Look at some videos on YouTube. 20,000 comments on brand new videos sometimes. A lot of good people are commenting on the internet. The problem is that the trust in public institutions is at an all time low, and that is leading to much more doom and gloom and those of us who are from the 2000s can feel the difference in the comment sections.
- hluska 10mo ago
  People use analogies constantly. That was an analogy - it wasn’t meant to be taken literally.
ptero 10mo ago
> No idea how to fix the internet, maybe it's time to move to gopher or another protocol :-/ Fido and Usenet are still around. Kind-of. IMO google virtually killed that, too, when they started peddling google groups and did the classic embrace-extend-extinguish on the Usenet.
- jll29 10mo ago
  Perhaps time for a revival - text mode only, please, to keep out those that I don't want on there (the platform appearing too unattractive might be the way forward to avoid the TikTokers).
Khaine 10mo ago
Thats just what the internet of the mid to late 90s was like. People rarely used their real name, there were hundreds of forums, some private. You could have different nicks on them. Nobody knew you were a dog on the internet[1] until the rise of Facebook and linking your real identity with an online identity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you%27re_a_dog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...
- mjevans 10mo ago
  The idea that everyone has only one identity, one whole, is harmful. People change over time. People change even a little based on who's around them. Even memories change as people see things in new lights. The Internet of the late 90s and early 2000s was spectacular in that everyone could be as authentic and deep as they wanted to be, and as shallow and invisible as they wanted to be depending on context. Firefox? Want to know how to really sell yourself. Be 'For the User', like TRON (but avoid that for copyright reasons and because normal people don't understand). The user should be able to TRUST that Firefox isn't selling them out, spying on them, or doing anything strange. That when Firefox creates identity sandboxes they're firewalled from each other to the maximum extent; including resisting device fingerprinting (just look generic and boring).
  - hyperadvanced 10mo ago
    You could argue (it certainly has been argued) that the ability for technology to dissolve the usually more coherent identities that we take on daily by granting unlimited role play, trolling, and exploration is simply too much for a lot of people, and makes it hard to maintain a coherent sense of self. This is especially true of people who are “internet addicts” - not that the designation means a whole lot as I’m here at the gym talking to you on the phone. Don’t get me wrong, I mostly agree with your comment. I think even more dastardly is the tendency for the internet to market new personalities to you, based on what’s profitable
    - ethbr1 10mo ago
      There's also the inconvenient truth that a very specific part of the world was online in the 1990s. Primarily more educated, more liberal, more wealthy. Turns out, when you hook the rest of the planet online, you get mass persuasion campaigns, fake genocide "reporting", and enough of an increase in ambient noise that coherent anonymous discourse becomes impossible. I mean, look at the comments on Fox News or political YouTube videos. That's the real average level of discussion.
dkarbayev 10mo ago
Most of the internet users are passive content consumers, and it’s been the case since a long time ago. There's a post about it from 2019: https://bewilderbeast.org/2019/08/16/most-of-what-you-read-on-the-internet-is-written-by-insane-people/ https://bewilderbeast.org/2019/08/16/most-of-what-you-read-o...
golem14 10mo ago
And yet, here you are, posting ... BTW, I don't explicitly disagree with what you're saying, but it would be good to look at actual data instead of anecdata to know for sure, and the people who have the data are not telling ...
- cookiengineer 10mo ago
  > And yet, here you are, posting ... Correction, I am posting while pooping. I don't care much about social media these days and I draw the line at the toilet door.
  - shermantanktop 10mo ago
    Given the word count of your original post, I can tell you that daily psyllium husk is a miracle.
    - cookiengineer 10mo ago
      Actually, thanks for the reminder.
drob518 10mo ago
I know I self-censor a LOT.
mikestorrent 10mo ago
To be fair, back in those "good old phpbb days", people trolled just as hard as anyone does now, and maybe worse, since the consequences of it were not as visible, and getting in trouble for things you said online was virtually nonexistent. Everyone used a fake name, and while it might be possible to dox someone, it wasn't an operational concern for anyone who just wanted to be a jerk...
- Majromax 10mo ago
  > people trolled just as hard as anyone does now, Trolling had (has) a different character in smaller, more private forums: it tends towards more effort. A low-effort troll just gets banned and loses their platform, so the troll needs to at least ride the line of legitimacy. Drawing the line back to Usenet, the sheer effort that went into some trolling garnered respect if not necessarily acceptance. Drive-by interactions reward volume since the 'game' isn't repeated. Curated social media feeds like Twitter are even worse; the troll has their own audience predisposed towards acceptance and the victim is just set-dressing. I analogize this to in-person interactions: ostracization is mutually costly. A small group loses a member who was at least making a 'warm body' contribution, but the ostracized person loses a whole set of social benefits.
  - mikestorrent 10mo ago
    So true. I was one of those trolls, so I know it well; playing the role of a heel. People would know and remember you by avatar and custom forum titles and a huge garish signature... it cemented you as a person, gave you a face in a way that Hacker News or Reddit threads do not.
- Flere-Imsaho 10mo ago
  The trolling that happened on IRC would put modern day trolling to shame. Imagine posting a link to an exe claiming to be one thing but would actually contain Back Orifice (a Trojan that gave you remote access to the victim's pc). People would blindly download exes and run them on completely unprotected Windows 98. To be fair I do miss the "old Internet". Less corporate, money grabbing, more freedom.
fragmede 10mo ago
All my real HN friends are on https://news.ysimulator.run/news https://news.ysimulator.run/news
- lolive 10mo ago
  The forum where Skynet becomes self-conscious :)
campital 10mo ago
I don’t see any obvious evidence of bot activity on that thread (and all of my spot checks strongly leaned human). Were some comments removed or something?
- brigandish 10mo ago
  I noticed a few people on HN have started complaining that anyone arguing with them is a bot. I think it's a coping mechanism at finding people who challenge them, but maybe they've been on too many bot-infested forums lately, or are just young (that might overlap with both users of bot-infested forums and those who haven't had their ideas challenged much).
xbmcuser 10mo ago
Most of her friends are probably women. Try making an account with an obvious female name and you will see a marked difference on most social platforms I am saying this as a guy we really don't understand the world women live in online or offline.
- fennecbutt 10mo ago
  I think some of us have a fair idea. And I think both sexes have problems that we could solve but continue to ignore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Made_Man_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Made_Man_(book) Still a very valid experiment. I know the source of both sex' strife though: competition. I don't think we'll ever solve that, not while we're still monkeys.
  - sph 10mo ago
    I like her take-away from this experiment: Vincent stated that, after the experiment, she gained more sympathy for the male condition: "Men are suffering. They have different problems than women have, but they don't have it better. They need our sympathy, they need our love, and they need each other more than anything else. They need to be together." I respect that, compared to the arguments that sex A is having a better time than B, or that one needs more support and focus than the other. We’re all in the same, but different, shit.
    - jpster 10mo ago
      > They have different problems than women have, but they don't have it better. How can I agree with this? Material conditions matter: whatever problem you have, being poorer will make it worse. Women have been earning less than men for decades, and most highly paid execs are men, not women. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/03/01/the-enduring-grip-of-the-gender-pay-gap/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/03/01/the-end...
      - Slava_Propanei 10mo ago
        [dead]
ethagknight 10mo ago
I never tell people I comment online. No one I know knows my Reddit username (as far as I know…). Few of my friends even know what HN is.
- ravikapoor101 10mo ago
  I know. In fact, millions of us know your reddit username
  - hluska 10mo ago
    What a weird comment.
- malcolmxxx 10mo ago
  Keybase wants to be that hub. Well, it can't be, sir.
KPGv2 10mo ago
> Trust has eroded so much over the last two decades that most forums are either full of bots or full of annoyed and toxic people. It's very rare to find welcoming communities to newbies, and most of the ones I have discovered were offline connections. Tumblr is still doing pretty well on that front. I'm there for a fandom, and it's a super positive atmosphere where everyone just wants to make and talk about cool art.
enos_feedler 10mo ago
I think the idea that nobody would talk to strangers online is a bit too general. We are all mostly doing it here. I do it on reddit all the time in the same recurring subreddits that I've grown to trust. IRC was also pretty hostile back in the 90s. But again it depended on the communities. Just think you can't generalize the internet this way.
- mahirsaid 10mo ago
  True I would also add that this an exception to most social media platforms. I feel as there is a roundtable Everytime somone posts a something. I'm some how invited and listening, whether I comment or say something is entirely up to what I have to share. Argument or debate isnt so aggressiveas it's factual based for the most part.
spoaceman7777 10mo ago
most people just don't tell other people about what they do online. it's very private. like, it's a running on joke on most social media websites that "i hope no one i know irl finds this account..." i think your friend is just overestimating her knowledge of her friends' lives
stpedgwdgfhgdd 10mo ago
This thread is working pretty decently. No bots so far
pzo 10mo ago
> she said: "I know nobody that comments on online forums. Yet she knows you and you and me are strangers talking to each other on this forum. I think we don't know even close friends what online communities people hang out - the reason she didn't know about you being on HN.
- omnifischer 10mo ago
  Niche forums still exist with real humans like for example, LTT or openZFS forums. But main stream ones like XDA, reddit or YouTube etc are totally ruined by AI.
lazide 10mo ago
I’m a man who had to do this because of stalkers. Literally serious, life damaging stalkers.
midnitewarrior 10mo ago
Reputation management is what it will take to bring trust back to all forms of media. It means creating a trusted identity that can be verified, and that the identity is known to be a real human with a reputation to lose if exposed as being a bot or otherwise untrustworthy. Unfortunately, for common people whose aim is not celebrity, this means handing over your privacy in order to have a voice. We can do this in our IRL circles of trust, people know you because they have met or interacted with you personally. Online, this means someone like Zuck creating a digital identity for us after we entrust them with our privacy, or some kind of open source complicated technology identifier like a cryptographically verified signature that is techno bro-free that will only be adopted or understood by tech literate. It's a dark day for genuine human interaction and trust.
- raducu 10mo ago
  > Reputation management is what it will take to bring trust back to all forms of media. Does that really work, though? I think it doesn't -- think all the anti-vaccine type influencers -- their identities are known and they're ok with it. > It means creating a trusted identity that can be verified, and that the identity is known to be a real human with a reputation to lose if exposed as being a bot or otherwise untrustworthy. Surely this won't be used for nefarious reasons or to silence individuals like it's done in the UK or in the cancel culture actions. /s
atombender 10mo ago
Which Reddit thread was that, out of curiosity? And how do you know which commenters were bots?
hopelite 10mo ago
> how the thread was full of bots talking with other bots I am sure there are some dead giveaways, but how can you be sure about that? What I have experienced is both going into forums/discussions someone said was bots talking to bots, with no real clear indication by any of the many markers I am aware of that it was in fact bots; and also comments calling responses bots seemingly as a manipulative dismissal in response to something that was not the consensus or commonly approved position. I say that because my impression is that what is happening is a full on breakdown of civic discussion and conversation as a whole. The internet destroyed IRL public forums (pubs/bars, clubs, etc) and the draconian COVID policies took the death knell to many more, and now bots and the seemingly bigger issue of immediate distrust of everything, seems to also be destroying online conversations of all sorts. Yes, you’ll be able to have small group meetings and maybe even voice/video only conversations, but that brings a whole host of other systems changes with it, especially as mass surveillance long surpassed anything the worst tyrants of history could have ever even dreamed of implementing. It all seems a shift into unhealthy territory as a civilization in general, including since essentially all western governments cannot be trusted by their own people anymore.
spacecadet 10mo ago
For what its worth. I recently joined "Carpokes" which is a free members only Porsche forum being run by a man hell bent on keeping it a friendly, bot-free, community. Its been great engaging in a forum again where I look at it maybe once a week.
ileonichwiesz 10mo ago
I think some of this is caused by the non-obvious mechanisms of how interactions on these platforms work. When you replied to a thread on a phpbb forum (or when you reply to this HN thread), your reply „lived” in that thread, on that forum, and that was that. The algorithm wouldn’t show that reply to your dad. I remember liking a comment on Facebook years ago, and being horrified when some of my friends and family got a „John liked this comment, join the discussion!” notification served straight onto their timelines, completely out of context. I felt spied on. I thought I was interacting with a funny stranger, but it turned out that that tiny interaction would be recorded and rebroadcast to whomever, without my knowledge. Similarly, commenting on a youtube video was a much different experience when your youtube account wasn’t linked to all your personal information. If you comment on a social media post, what’s going to happen? How sure are you that that comment, however innocuous it may seem now, won’t be dredged up 8 years by a prospective employer? Even if not, your like or comment it’s still a valuable data point that you’re giving to Zuckerberg or similar. Every smallest interaction enriches some of the worst people in the industry, if not in the world. The way I speak, the tone I use, the mannerisms I employ, they all change depending on the room I’m in and on the people I’m speaking to - but on modern social media, you can never be sure who your audience is. It’s safer to stay quiet and passive.
- pants2 10mo ago
  This is very well said! Probably also why social media has become so "fake" - back in the early days of Facebook, friends would talk to each other like friends. But after my religious aunt started seeing the comments I was leaving on a friend's pics, let's just say that stopped pretty quick. Now the only thing I would ever consider posting on Facebook is "What a beautiful day! Went for a great hike with my family and enjoyed nature."
  - ileonichwiesz 10mo ago
    Very true! As I remember, Google+ was a step towards figuring out this issue - instead of a general Facebook-style „Friends” that includes all sorts of different people you know (or once knew), the idea was that you’d have multiple „circles” of acquaintances that you could post to separately: family, college friends, coworkers, etc. Of course that didn’t really pan out, and the social network itself collapsed under its own weight within a couple years without ever reaching widespread adoption. It’s interesting though, because I think it really was ahead of its time - these days I just have multiple different groupchats that I text, and that’s basically the same thing.
vonunov 10mo ago
I had a comment auto-removed from a subreddit and when I mailed its mods to inquire what might have triggered it, I was informed that commenting on a post from a month ago (yes really) is now considered a red flag for spam/bot activity. I miss phpBB/IPB/etc. forums having a pair of resident "trolls" who were by far the most prolific posters on the entire forum, because they would gravitate to each other and "debate" at length, ostensibly but questionably as bitter rivals

mgaunard 10mo ago

They don't write on forums but they like or share a story. It's just more passive/consumer-minded.

chrchr 10mo ago

But your friend is wrong. She does know at least one person who comments on online forums. I bet she knows more too.

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
misiti3780 10mo ago
exactly!
baobun 10mo ago
Don't ask don't tell.
schuylerlarson 10mo ago
Completely agree. Look at some videos on YouTube. 20,000 comments on brand new videos sometimes. A lot of good people are commenting on the internet. The problem is that the trust in public institutions is at an all time low, and that is leading to much more doom and gloom and those of us who are from the 2000s can feel the difference in the comment sections.
hluska 10mo ago
People use analogies constantly. That was an analogy - it wasn’t meant to be taken literally.

ptero 10mo ago

> No idea how to fix the internet, maybe it's time to move to gopher or another protocol :-/ Fido and Usenet are still around. Kind-of. IMO google virtually killed that, too, when they started peddling google groups and did the classic embrace-extend-extinguish on the Usenet.

jll29 10mo ago
Perhaps time for a revival - text mode only, please, to keep out those that I don't want on there (the platform appearing too unattractive might be the way forward to avoid the TikTokers).

Khaine 10mo ago

Thats just what the internet of the mid to late 90s was like. People rarely used their real name, there were hundreds of forums, some private. You could have different nicks on them. Nobody knew you were a dog on the internet[1] until the rise of Facebook and linking your real identity with an online identity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you%27re_a_dog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...

mjevans 10mo ago
The idea that everyone has only one identity, one whole, is harmful. People change over time. People change even a little based on who's around them. Even memories change as people see things in new lights. The Internet of the late 90s and early 2000s was spectacular in that everyone could be as authentic and deep as they wanted to be, and as shallow and invisible as they wanted to be depending on context. Firefox? Want to know how to really sell yourself. Be 'For the User', like TRON (but avoid that for copyright reasons and because normal people don't understand). The user should be able to TRUST that Firefox isn't selling them out, spying on them, or doing anything strange. That when Firefox creates identity sandboxes they're firewalled from each other to the maximum extent; including resisting device fingerprinting (just look generic and boring).
- hyperadvanced 10mo ago
  You could argue (it certainly has been argued) that the ability for technology to dissolve the usually more coherent identities that we take on daily by granting unlimited role play, trolling, and exploration is simply too much for a lot of people, and makes it hard to maintain a coherent sense of self. This is especially true of people who are “internet addicts” - not that the designation means a whole lot as I’m here at the gym talking to you on the phone. Don’t get me wrong, I mostly agree with your comment. I think even more dastardly is the tendency for the internet to market new personalities to you, based on what’s profitable
  - ethbr1 10mo ago
    There's also the inconvenient truth that a very specific part of the world was online in the 1990s. Primarily more educated, more liberal, more wealthy. Turns out, when you hook the rest of the planet online, you get mass persuasion campaigns, fake genocide "reporting", and enough of an increase in ambient noise that coherent anonymous discourse becomes impossible. I mean, look at the comments on Fox News or political YouTube videos. That's the real average level of discussion.

dkarbayev 10mo ago

Most of the internet users are passive content consumers, and it’s been the case since a long time ago. There's a post about it from 2019: https://bewilderbeast.org/2019/08/16/most-of-what-you-read-on-the-internet-is-written-by-insane-people/ https://bewilderbeast.org/2019/08/16/most-of-what-you-read-o...

golem14 10mo ago

And yet, here you are, posting ... BTW, I don't explicitly disagree with what you're saying, but it would be good to look at actual data instead of anecdata to know for sure, and the people who have the data are not telling ...

cookiengineer 10mo ago
> And yet, here you are, posting ... Correction, I am posting while pooping. I don't care much about social media these days and I draw the line at the toilet door.
- shermantanktop 10mo ago
  Given the word count of your original post, I can tell you that daily psyllium husk is a miracle.
  - cookiengineer 10mo ago
    Actually, thanks for the reminder.

drob518 10mo ago

I know I self-censor a LOT.

mikestorrent 10mo ago

To be fair, back in those "good old phpbb days", people trolled just as hard as anyone does now, and maybe worse, since the consequences of it were not as visible, and getting in trouble for things you said online was virtually nonexistent. Everyone used a fake name, and while it might be possible to dox someone, it wasn't an operational concern for anyone who just wanted to be a jerk...

Majromax 10mo ago
> people trolled just as hard as anyone does now, Trolling had (has) a different character in smaller, more private forums: it tends towards more effort. A low-effort troll just gets banned and loses their platform, so the troll needs to at least ride the line of legitimacy. Drawing the line back to Usenet, the sheer effort that went into some trolling garnered respect if not necessarily acceptance. Drive-by interactions reward volume since the 'game' isn't repeated. Curated social media feeds like Twitter are even worse; the troll has their own audience predisposed towards acceptance and the victim is just set-dressing. I analogize this to in-person interactions: ostracization is mutually costly. A small group loses a member who was at least making a 'warm body' contribution, but the ostracized person loses a whole set of social benefits.
- mikestorrent 10mo ago
  So true. I was one of those trolls, so I know it well; playing the role of a heel. People would know and remember you by avatar and custom forum titles and a huge garish signature... it cemented you as a person, gave you a face in a way that Hacker News or Reddit threads do not.
Flere-Imsaho 10mo ago
The trolling that happened on IRC would put modern day trolling to shame. Imagine posting a link to an exe claiming to be one thing but would actually contain Back Orifice (a Trojan that gave you remote access to the victim's pc). People would blindly download exes and run them on completely unprotected Windows 98. To be fair I do miss the "old Internet". Less corporate, money grabbing, more freedom.

fragmede 10mo ago

All my real HN friends are on https://news.ysimulator.run/news https://news.ysimulator.run/news

lolive 10mo ago
The forum where Skynet becomes self-conscious :)

campital 10mo ago

I don’t see any obvious evidence of bot activity on that thread (and all of my spot checks strongly leaned human). Were some comments removed or something?

brigandish 10mo ago
I noticed a few people on HN have started complaining that anyone arguing with them is a bot. I think it's a coping mechanism at finding people who challenge them, but maybe they've been on too many bot-infested forums lately, or are just young (that might overlap with both users of bot-infested forums and those who haven't had their ideas challenged much).

xbmcuser 10mo ago

Most of her friends are probably women. Try making an account with an obvious female name and you will see a marked difference on most social platforms I am saying this as a guy we really don't understand the world women live in online or offline.

fennecbutt 10mo ago
I think some of us have a fair idea. And I think both sexes have problems that we could solve but continue to ignore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Made_Man_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Made_Man_(book) Still a very valid experiment. I know the source of both sex' strife though: competition. I don't think we'll ever solve that, not while we're still monkeys.
- sph 10mo ago
  I like her take-away from this experiment: Vincent stated that, after the experiment, she gained more sympathy for the male condition: "Men are suffering. They have different problems than women have, but they don't have it better. They need our sympathy, they need our love, and they need each other more than anything else. They need to be together." I respect that, compared to the arguments that sex A is having a better time than B, or that one needs more support and focus than the other. We’re all in the same, but different, shit.
  - jpster 10mo ago
    > They have different problems than women have, but they don't have it better. How can I agree with this? Material conditions matter: whatever problem you have, being poorer will make it worse. Women have been earning less than men for decades, and most highly paid execs are men, not women. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/03/01/the-enduring-grip-of-the-gender-pay-gap/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/03/01/the-end...
    - Slava_Propanei 10mo ago
      [dead]

ethagknight 10mo ago

I never tell people I comment online. No one I know knows my Reddit username (as far as I know…). Few of my friends even know what HN is.

ravikapoor101 10mo ago
I know. In fact, millions of us know your reddit username
- hluska 10mo ago
  What a weird comment.
malcolmxxx 10mo ago
Keybase wants to be that hub. Well, it can't be, sir.

KPGv2 10mo ago

> Trust has eroded so much over the last two decades that most forums are either full of bots or full of annoyed and toxic people. It's very rare to find welcoming communities to newbies, and most of the ones I have discovered were offline connections. Tumblr is still doing pretty well on that front. I'm there for a fandom, and it's a super positive atmosphere where everyone just wants to make and talk about cool art.

enos_feedler 10mo ago

I think the idea that nobody would talk to strangers online is a bit too general. We are all mostly doing it here. I do it on reddit all the time in the same recurring subreddits that I've grown to trust. IRC was also pretty hostile back in the 90s. But again it depended on the communities. Just think you can't generalize the internet this way.

mahirsaid 10mo ago
True I would also add that this an exception to most social media platforms. I feel as there is a roundtable Everytime somone posts a something. I'm some how invited and listening, whether I comment or say something is entirely up to what I have to share. Argument or debate isnt so aggressiveas it's factual based for the most part.

spoaceman7777 10mo ago

most people just don't tell other people about what they do online. it's very private. like, it's a running on joke on most social media websites that "i hope no one i know irl finds this account..." i think your friend is just overestimating her knowledge of her friends' lives

stpedgwdgfhgdd 10mo ago

This thread is working pretty decently. No bots so far

pzo 10mo ago

> she said: "I know nobody that comments on online forums. Yet she knows you and you and me are strangers talking to each other on this forum. I think we don't know even close friends what online communities people hang out - the reason she didn't know about you being on HN.

omnifischer 10mo ago
Niche forums still exist with real humans like for example, LTT or openZFS forums. But main stream ones like XDA, reddit or YouTube etc are totally ruined by AI.

lazide 10mo ago

I’m a man who had to do this because of stalkers. Literally serious, life damaging stalkers.

midnitewarrior 10mo ago

Reputation management is what it will take to bring trust back to all forms of media. It means creating a trusted identity that can be verified, and that the identity is known to be a real human with a reputation to lose if exposed as being a bot or otherwise untrustworthy. Unfortunately, for common people whose aim is not celebrity, this means handing over your privacy in order to have a voice. We can do this in our IRL circles of trust, people know you because they have met or interacted with you personally. Online, this means someone like Zuck creating a digital identity for us after we entrust them with our privacy, or some kind of open source complicated technology identifier like a cryptographically verified signature that is techno bro-free that will only be adopted or understood by tech literate. It's a dark day for genuine human interaction and trust.

raducu 10mo ago
> Reputation management is what it will take to bring trust back to all forms of media. Does that really work, though? I think it doesn't -- think all the anti-vaccine type influencers -- their identities are known and they're ok with it. > It means creating a trusted identity that can be verified, and that the identity is known to be a real human with a reputation to lose if exposed as being a bot or otherwise untrustworthy. Surely this won't be used for nefarious reasons or to silence individuals like it's done in the UK or in the cancel culture actions. /s

atombender 10mo ago

Which Reddit thread was that, out of curiosity? And how do you know which commenters were bots?

hopelite 10mo ago

> how the thread was full of bots talking with other bots I am sure there are some dead giveaways, but how can you be sure about that? What I have experienced is both going into forums/discussions someone said was bots talking to bots, with no real clear indication by any of the many markers I am aware of that it was in fact bots; and also comments calling responses bots seemingly as a manipulative dismissal in response to something that was not the consensus or commonly approved position. I say that because my impression is that what is happening is a full on breakdown of civic discussion and conversation as a whole. The internet destroyed IRL public forums (pubs/bars, clubs, etc) and the draconian COVID policies took the death knell to many more, and now bots and the seemingly bigger issue of immediate distrust of everything, seems to also be destroying online conversations of all sorts. Yes, you’ll be able to have small group meetings and maybe even voice/video only conversations, but that brings a whole host of other systems changes with it, especially as mass surveillance long surpassed anything the worst tyrants of history could have ever even dreamed of implementing. It all seems a shift into unhealthy territory as a civilization in general, including since essentially all western governments cannot be trusted by their own people anymore.

spacecadet 10mo ago

For what its worth. I recently joined "Carpokes" which is a free members only Porsche forum being run by a man hell bent on keeping it a friendly, bot-free, community. Its been great engaging in a forum again where I look at it maybe once a week.

ileonichwiesz 10mo ago

I think some of this is caused by the non-obvious mechanisms of how interactions on these platforms work. When you replied to a thread on a phpbb forum (or when you reply to this HN thread), your reply „lived” in that thread, on that forum, and that was that. The algorithm wouldn’t show that reply to your dad. I remember liking a comment on Facebook years ago, and being horrified when some of my friends and family got a „John liked this comment, join the discussion!” notification served straight onto their timelines, completely out of context. I felt spied on. I thought I was interacting with a funny stranger, but it turned out that that tiny interaction would be recorded and rebroadcast to whomever, without my knowledge. Similarly, commenting on a youtube video was a much different experience when your youtube account wasn’t linked to all your personal information. If you comment on a social media post, what’s going to happen? How sure are you that that comment, however innocuous it may seem now, won’t be dredged up 8 years by a prospective employer? Even if not, your like or comment it’s still a valuable data point that you’re giving to Zuckerberg or similar. Every smallest interaction enriches some of the worst people in the industry, if not in the world. The way I speak, the tone I use, the mannerisms I employ, they all change depending on the room I’m in and on the people I’m speaking to - but on modern social media, you can never be sure who your audience is. It’s safer to stay quiet and passive.

pants2 10mo ago
This is very well said! Probably also why social media has become so "fake" - back in the early days of Facebook, friends would talk to each other like friends. But after my religious aunt started seeing the comments I was leaving on a friend's pics, let's just say that stopped pretty quick. Now the only thing I would ever consider posting on Facebook is "What a beautiful day! Went for a great hike with my family and enjoyed nature."
- ileonichwiesz 10mo ago
  Very true! As I remember, Google+ was a step towards figuring out this issue - instead of a general Facebook-style „Friends” that includes all sorts of different people you know (or once knew), the idea was that you’d have multiple „circles” of acquaintances that you could post to separately: family, college friends, coworkers, etc. Of course that didn’t really pan out, and the social network itself collapsed under its own weight within a couple years without ever reaching widespread adoption. It’s interesting though, because I think it really was ahead of its time - these days I just have multiple different groupchats that I text, and that’s basically the same thing.

vonunov 10mo ago

I had a comment auto-removed from a subreddit and when I mailed its mods to inquire what might have triggered it, I was informed that commenting on a post from a month ago (yes really) is now considered a red flag for spam/bot activity. I miss phpBB/IPB/etc. forums having a pair of resident "trolls" who were by far the most prolific posters on the entire forum, because they would gravitate to each other and "debate" at length, ostensibly but questionably as bitter rivals