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Bot account. Last active with two posts in 2017, then started spamming today with the usual HN spambot formula. As usual, doing the weird thing that only the HN
by anonymous908213 8mo ago
Bot account. Last active with two posts in 2017, then started spamming today with the usual HN spambot formula. As usual, doing the weird thing that only the HN spambots do where it's almost always exactly three paragraphs of 1-2 sentences each. Not sure why they prompt for that formula but it makes it very easy to spot out. For me, I guess. This is voted to the top and the bot has over 50 karma so apparently most people are unable to detect LLM spam even when they make it as obvious as they possibly can.
- nubg 8mo agoAny idea what the endgoal of such bots is? Karmafarming and then astroturfing?
- anonymous908213 8mo agoAstroturfing seems to be the goal. I notice sometimes there are threads in which numerous of these bots converge to promote some dubious product being shilled.
- ChadNauseam 8mo agoI just wish they would use bigger models. These ones always write stuff that makes no sense. Like it says "the same principle applies to mobile games" then describes a different principle
- Rebelgecko 8mo agoThere's some bots on HN who write much more coherently and get a decent # of upvotes. I was only able to catch one because the comment started with something along the lines of "Here's a smart response for a technical audience about _____"
- nubg 8mo agolmao, got a link?
- Rebelgecko 8mo agoSadly it was edited, but this comment used to be clearly responding to a prompt: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46805888 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46805888
- Bjartr 8mo agoMight be because while it's not high quality, it is ultimately a constructive comment. So this might be a case of https://xkcd.com/810/ https://xkcd.com/810/
- anonymous908213 8mo agoI suppose 15 years ago it would not have been possible to predict how fucking irritating these comments could be. I would rather have the old spambots back at this point. Please, spambots, go back to trying to sell me penis enlargement pills, I beg of you.
- juped 8mo agoNow this is a definite human comment, shoehorned in xkcd links are a huge human tell.
- Bjartr 8mo agoJust doing my part
- charles_f 8mo agoAs a master in commenting I would argue that this is quite smart. Indeed this might be a bot. Or maybe it's not, who knows? It's sometimes hard to tell with comments. It's just the times we live in, uncertainty is a given, most of the time we don't know. I guess we'll have to make do.
- anonymous908213 8mo agoGotta try harder than that. There's a certain length to their paragraphs as well, you can see from their post history the general shape of their messages that will cue you off that you're probably about to read spam before you've even read the first word. Also abundant LLMisms. Four "not X but Y" and three lists of three in only five sentences. The sheer density of LLMisms is absurd. Not to mention that vague sense of incoherency despite overall being a grammatically correct series of words. There are so many tells it's criminal people aren't catching it.
- usefulposter 8mo agoI wish I had a super-upvote. "OP here" or "Author here" in posts is an obvious one when you see it. (In both cases, it's completely redundant!) As for comments, regurgitating the input too closely and overusing abbreviations are highly indicative, yet many commenters don't notice. See for instance (slop warning) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46986273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46986273 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46965103 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46965103.
- pierrec 8mo agoI would suggest sending this as an email to the mods instead of a reply, what you're doing is practically a bug report to the bot owner right now. The resulting discussion isn't super interesting either (IMO).
- anonymous908213 8mo agoI am not signing up to a mini-moderator who has to e-mail dang 5 times a day. I want to not see these messages in the first place, and for that to be possible, the community needs to learn and be able to recognise this for themselves so this spam can be flagged and killed on sight. If the bot owner happens to waste their time reading the responses to the dozens of comments one of their many spambots made, and improves the bots as a result, so be it. They're already winning the war as it stands, not like things can get much worse. I'd like to at least try to make an effort to make things better. Maybe the actual answer is that I just need to stop using HN, though, since the spambots are taking over the site and yet people are more concerned with the people pointing that out than the actual problem.
- pierrec 8mo agoOK, I sent the email myself. You don't have to do it. Just once, not 5 times per day. Agree about community awareness, but I think emailing the mods is more effective than responding to one of the 1000 comments this account is making.
- dang 8mo agoThanks for doing that because I had no idea this was happening. I've banned the account now and flagkilled the 30+ comments they posted today.
- em-bee 8mo agoyou missed one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46998241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46998241 ;-P two actually: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46988519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46988519
- mtoner23 8mo agoDo you check everyone's hn account history?
- anonymous908213 8mo agoNo, I check account history when the text is obviously LLM-generated. I mostly point it out because if I don't make it abundantly clear how obvious the spambot is by its behaviour, I will get people telling me that it could totally be a human and that I'm making a false accusation.
- hollerith 8mo agoThanks. I upvoted one of its comments yesterday; i.e., it fooled me.
- em-bee 8mo agoi saw a flagged comment and thought who the hell would flag that? it makes no sense. was going to vouch for it, but i always check the comment history which is where i noticed that all comments had a suspiciously similar pattern, and i found this thread. some indicator that an account is banned would be nice for those who have showdead active. one thing that is disturbing is that the comments of the bot are all lowercase. is that a bot feature now? are they doing that to appear less like a bot? do i have to change my style to avoid looking like a bot? or is changing my style going to make me look like a bot? i feel trapped.
- anonymous908213 8mo agoNo, most of the spambots use proper casing. Whoever is behind this does prompt different bots to generate output in different styles with the intent to appear more conversational/human, so each bot has its own "personality" and typing style. An example of another style here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46885996 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46885996