3 ms·

The dynamics of content production are shifting hard right now. Things that used to signal something interesting are being generated in minutes with little thou

by dang 8mo ago

The dynamics of content production are shifting hard right now. Things that used to signal something interesting are being generated in minutes with little thought. It's getting democratized, but also commoditized. It's too soon to know how this is going to shake out, so we should resist the temptation to impose rules prematurely. And we should especially not do so out of resistance to change (when has that ever worked out?) But we'll do what we need to do to keep our heads above water. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/showlim https://news.ycombinator.com/showlim. I figure pragmatics are fine as long one keeps adjusting.

lelanthran 8mo ago
> The dynamics of content production are shifting hard right now. Things that used to signal something interesting are being generated in minutes with little thought. It's getting democratized, but also commoditized. That's true, but it also means that Show HN has less value than it used to: the SNR is falling off a cliff :-( I planned to post a Show HN for a new product I want to launch (all human written by myself, with only the GEO docs vibed currently), but not sure now that any decent/quality product will ever get air. All the oxygen is being sucked out by low-effort products.
- dang 8mo ago
  That's what I mean about doing things to keep our heads above water. For example, we're restricting Show HNs for now. If you (or anyone) have ideas about other pragmatic measures we could take, we're interested.
  - lelanthran 8mo ago
    > For example, we're restricting Show HNs for now. This is promising; in what way is it restricted? Are there any extra hoops for me to jump through before (eventually) posting my ShowHN?
    - dang 8mo ago
      You'll be fine. I don't want to say much specifically because it'll just end up as extra steps on some "how to promote your project on HN" checklist somewhere.
  - akomtu 8mo ago
    Invisible text that will serve as a honey pot for LLMs is one thing to try. Imagine a comment where half of the words are marked as invisible by CSS, the other half has letters rearranged, but at the HTML level all the words look the same. LLMs will have to render pages which is a lot more expensive.
    - jstanley 8mo ago
      That won't help. 1.) Rendering pages is table stakes for an AI headless browser tool, and 2.) most of the LLM comments probably come from copy and pasting to ChatGPT, not from autonomous agents.
  - pamcake 8mo ago
    > If you (or anyone) have ideas about other pragmatic measures we could take, we're interested. Suggestion: Make it clear and explicit in guidelines and FAQ that this forum is for human conversation and that writing/editing post or comment by LLM or automated posting is bannable offense. Second and similarly, "vibe-coded" should have no place on Show HN and this could be made much more explicit.
  - trinsic2 8mo ago
    maybe you guys already do this, but what about having a line of text near the submission fields that says "If you are submitting a Show HN post, please do not post an AI generated version, it degrades the quality of submissions (or it makes it harder for others to submit high quality content, or something like that) I know when I see those guidelines show up in reddit submission forms, i respect that because I see what the sub exactly wants..
cobbzilla 8mo ago
I appreciate the thoughtful approach. It must be a deluge.
lll-o-lll 8mo ago
We need some human based version of “proof of work”.
smusamashah 8mo ago
Will removing the incentive, which is the upvotes, help reduce this spam? You can disable public access to the points gained by a new account (or may be for every account). Or if the ranking that's attractive to spammer, may be try experimenting with randomizing order of comments in a discussion.
- WarcrimeActual 8mo ago
  What I hope not to see is the Reddit method of "Oh you made a new account? Cool. You can't post anywhere and you can't post until you've posted catch 22"
stingraycharles 8mo ago
Isn’t that going to cause more spam, though, from people that start using AI to comment until their account is mature enough to post a Show HN?
- dang 8mo ago
  That's a risk, yes.
Arkhaine_kupo 8mo ago
> It's too soon to know how this is going to shake out, so we should resist the temptation to impose rules prematurely. alternative view. it is going way too quickly and premature rules can be reduced if the actual damage is less than theexpected model. You can always make things easier, its much harder to rebuild a community that hass been destroyed. > And we should especially not do so out of resistance to change (when has that ever worked out?) You saying that in a website with a UI straight out of the 90s is really fucking funny. Cause HN is a perfect example of resistance to change working out. Facebook chased every trend and failed (the social media, meta as an ad platform is doing ok), tech blogs chased trends and failed. This place said "nah this is good", and is still here.
zahlman 8mo ago
> But we'll do what we need to do to keep our heads above water. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/showlim https://news.ycombinator.com/showlim. I figure pragmatics are fine as long one keeps adjusting. Is this page meant to be discoverable normally, or is it just there to host a message for those who encounter the restriction?
- dang 8mo ago
  The latter. But I gave it its own URL because it might also be worth linking to in other contexts.

by dang 8mo ago

lelanthran 8mo ago

> The dynamics of content production are shifting hard right now. Things that used to signal something interesting are being generated in minutes with little thought. It's getting democratized, but also commoditized. That's true, but it also means that Show HN has less value than it used to: the SNR is falling off a cliff :-( I planned to post a Show HN for a new product I want to launch (all human written by myself, with only the GEO docs vibed currently), but not sure now that any decent/quality product will ever get air. All the oxygen is being sucked out by low-effort products.

dang 8mo ago
That's what I mean about doing things to keep our heads above water. For example, we're restricting Show HNs for now. If you (or anyone) have ideas about other pragmatic measures we could take, we're interested.
- lelanthran 8mo ago
  > For example, we're restricting Show HNs for now. This is promising; in what way is it restricted? Are there any extra hoops for me to jump through before (eventually) posting my ShowHN?
  - dang 8mo ago
    You'll be fine. I don't want to say much specifically because it'll just end up as extra steps on some "how to promote your project on HN" checklist somewhere.
- akomtu 8mo ago
  Invisible text that will serve as a honey pot for LLMs is one thing to try. Imagine a comment where half of the words are marked as invisible by CSS, the other half has letters rearranged, but at the HTML level all the words look the same. LLMs will have to render pages which is a lot more expensive.
  - jstanley 8mo ago
    That won't help. 1.) Rendering pages is table stakes for an AI headless browser tool, and 2.) most of the LLM comments probably come from copy and pasting to ChatGPT, not from autonomous agents.
- pamcake 8mo ago
  > If you (or anyone) have ideas about other pragmatic measures we could take, we're interested. Suggestion: Make it clear and explicit in guidelines and FAQ that this forum is for human conversation and that writing/editing post or comment by LLM or automated posting is bannable offense. Second and similarly, "vibe-coded" should have no place on Show HN and this could be made much more explicit.
- trinsic2 8mo ago
  maybe you guys already do this, but what about having a line of text near the submission fields that says "If you are submitting a Show HN post, please do not post an AI generated version, it degrades the quality of submissions (or it makes it harder for others to submit high quality content, or something like that) I know when I see those guidelines show up in reddit submission forms, i respect that because I see what the sub exactly wants..

cobbzilla 8mo ago

I appreciate the thoughtful approach. It must be a deluge.

lll-o-lll 8mo ago

We need some human based version of “proof of work”.

smusamashah 8mo ago

Will removing the incentive, which is the upvotes, help reduce this spam? You can disable public access to the points gained by a new account (or may be for every account). Or if the ranking that's attractive to spammer, may be try experimenting with randomizing order of comments in a discussion.

WarcrimeActual 8mo ago
What I hope not to see is the Reddit method of "Oh you made a new account? Cool. You can't post anywhere and you can't post until you've posted catch 22"

stingraycharles 8mo ago

Isn’t that going to cause more spam, though, from people that start using AI to comment until their account is mature enough to post a Show HN?

dang 8mo ago
That's a risk, yes.

Arkhaine_kupo 8mo ago

> It's too soon to know how this is going to shake out, so we should resist the temptation to impose rules prematurely. alternative view. it is going way too quickly and premature rules can be reduced if the actual damage is less than theexpected model. You can always make things easier, its much harder to rebuild a community that hass been destroyed. > And we should especially not do so out of resistance to change (when has that ever worked out?) You saying that in a website with a UI straight out of the 90s is really fucking funny. Cause HN is a perfect example of resistance to change working out. Facebook chased every trend and failed (the social media, meta as an ad platform is doing ok), tech blogs chased trends and failed. This place said "nah this is good", and is still here.

zahlman 8mo ago

> But we'll do what we need to do to keep our heads above water. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/showlim https://news.ycombinator.com/showlim. I figure pragmatics are fine as long one keeps adjusting. Is this page meant to be discoverable normally, or is it just there to host a message for those who encounter the restriction?

dang 8mo ago
The latter. But I gave it its own URL because it might also be worth linking to in other contexts.