Ask HN: Are throwaway accounts becoming a problem for HN? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are throwaway accounts becoming a problem for HN?

25 pointsedf1342 comments

Recently I've noticed a lot of totally new accounts posting comments on topics (Mainly Crypto related!)... all commenting in the same direction.

Are these throwaway (Possibly bot) accounts now becoming a problem - effecting ranking and the conversation?

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Look, if you set up a permanent account on a pseudonymous forum, you are essentially linking it to your real identity.

Your writing voice, anecdotes from your life, what topics you understand and are interested in, it all comes together with enough time.

Not everybody wants to be bothered with all of that. Doesn't mean they're bots. It's worrying how often people assume that disagreement is necessarily inauthentic.

> It's worrying how often people assume that disagreement is necessarily inauthentic

I don't think the OP is assuming that, but it's not unreasonable to consider that lots of brand new accounts created to comment on cryptocurrency may not be authentic - primarily because they may have a vested interest to shill / be astroturfing.

No, account reliability tends to correlate with account age, but there's obviously no causation here.

However, it is a signal, and a fairly strong one, for authenticity.

To me, "authenticity" is somebody being able to express what they truly want to say, without having to worry too much about negative repercussions.

Somebody trying to build or maintain a certain reputation or a particular public image, for example, seems like a lack of authenticity to me.

I agree with you on this - I love being able to speak my mind without too much thought into building social credibility by having a comprehensive history of posts. It's an unnecessary barrier to attempt to require "credibility" to be able to contribute, most people here are in tech, and the quality of discussion is honestly pretty high compared to MANY other sites.

Implementing any barriers towards communication will incentivize people to be agreeable or not speak their full mind, if they have to reach a certain karma threshold or tie it to an easily traceable identity.

Moderation is pretty good here from my experience, and it's an excellent place to get information from others without worrying about the identity of whom you are engaging with. Honestly a breath of fresh air keeping it more old school than modern social media platforms.

And this mistaken idea is why people are able to buy and sell accounts for astroturfing.

> Doesn't mean they're bots.

I mean, that's what an account with the word "bot" in it created 4 days ago would say.

I've been playing the Fallout games lately, and the eyebots are kind of cute. See, there's another step on the road to doxxing.

This. I tend to create a new account every time I reach somewhere around 100 upvotes.

A secondary reason is that it helps to protect me from falling into the trap of caring about imaginary internet points.

The house always wins— true for casinos and distributors of imaginary internet points.

From the guidelines:

"Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to."

Sure, everyone would rather be anonymous given the chance, but it's not what this site was meant to be.

I find this rule strange. The only people on HN I’ve consciously remembered are dang and a few folks who are so combative and painful to discuss anything with I just try to avoid their posts altogether regardless of interest.

If I were still employed, I'd be a lot more careful about what I say here. I think in a generation or so, we'll either all use pseudonyms for everything, or the culture will be forced to be far more forgiving of our sins.

I like the theory that I heard on Wranglerstar a few days ago, that when Jesus gave his lecture about not casting stones... he wrote out the sins of those present in the sand, so that each person could see that he knew, and then he could cast that knowledge away.

In the future, everyone will see your foibles, and accept them.

An Algorithm will use them to divide society by using hypocrisy as a wedge.

It would be a return to the norm. Parents used to warn teenagers not to give out any personal information online. Using someone's real name in a public online setting was considered gauche.

Maybe a generation or two of dredging up digital sins will get us there.

> An Algorithm will use them to divide society by using hypocrisy as a wedge.

Maybe I'm too naive to think this will never happen but people's opinions change over time: some get reinforced while others become irrelevant.

Well, you can make a new account every three months without having throwaways.

I see plenty of spam and garbage on HN (examples: the same articles being posted over and over, random crypto articles with 4 upvotes, "this" or "I agree, fuck X!" bandwagon comments).

But I still think the lower volume vs. larger social medias, and the upvote/downvote system, is good so that these spam and throwaways don't take up too much of my attention vs. the actually good content.

I agree. The signal/noise ratio on HN is much better than many other sites.

I think that much of Reddit is what you said above, times 100. What makes HN less severe in the above is its community of thoughtful people.

I like being able to comment without coming up with a traceable handle, I really don't think it is a problem. And yes, I also participate time to time in crypto related threads, but am certainly not a bot. Pseudoanonymity is valuable, and there's naturally a good overlap with individuals interested in crypto as many are privacy advocates. I really, strongly believe that it is not a problem to be able to easily post here without things like a degree of MFA. It allows for easier communication

I disagree, I frequently see them used to express viewpoints that may cause people an issue at work. It's nice that Hacker News is a place where people can do that and still spark or engage with conversation on topics where they can't use their real name for whatever reason.

Especially given recent news that gives some people pause about using Twitter (too early to tell if there will be a real exodus or need for exodus from the platform). It's nice to have techy people to chat with on HN.

Only if "who said what in internet" is important to you. I you focus in the ideas and content instead than in the envelope this accounts can be still valuable

Same here.

I don't care what name is associated with a given comment.

It's the content of the comment that matters to me.

Many of the most insightful and informative comments I've ever seen have come from "throwaway" accounts.

Many of the most useless comments I've ever seen have come from prominent, real-name accounts.

Over time one learns to take the comments of green accounts with a certain grain of salt without discarding their opinion entirely. Wrongthink is a serious offense these days. Throwaways effectively work around this injunction.

My primary account on here is labeled throwaway even though I've been active for about four years. I just decided to label it "throwaway" to make it very clear that I have no concern whatsoever with reputation. In that respect it's a means of being able to express an opinion without the subsequent stress over perceived external perceptions.

I have not observed what you describe. But what I can tell about crypto topics (not only on HN) is that a quality of discussion use to be low while the amount of such discussion is very high. That remains me one of the most famous mathematical meme about Fermat's Great Theorem. There were a lot of people with no math education who use to desire to prove the theorem. And there are too much of people who use to tell something about crypto while have no ability to tell anything wise. What about throwaway accounts, I am sure this is not a problem at all. Just set your "showdead" option for yes and you will see how much of job is doing here invisibly.

People making many throwaway accounts end up rate-limiting themselves in certain regards. Make a new account and comment with a link as one of your first few messages? Probably going to get auto-killed (someone can vouch for it, I usually do) because it looks like a typical spam message. Similarly, young accounts posting too many submissions end up getting their submissions auto-killed for the same reason (these can also be vouched for, but people are less likely to notice it to do the vouching).

If it's how they want to interact with the site, though, let them. It doesn't hurt anything, just adds more green (and sometimes grey) to the page.

Wouldn't flagging/moderation that we have do work on this? Praise to mods, especially dang.

I would guess that the reason most of us are here is the higher than normal signal to noise ratio.

HN has a long way to go SNR wise before I think we reach bot problems. This is one of my couple accounts on HN, decoupled from my internet presence. Seems fine to me, for now.

My understanding would be throwaways should be limited to high value, usually one-time posts or comments specifically meant to anonymize a persons affiliation with a group in response to an event. Not just like an 'alt'. Are there other high value or in the spirit of HN uses?

I’ve noticed the same thing and been more and more feeling like commenting this same thing.

Not just on crypto, but on other topics that people don’t want to be associated with their actual opinions (GutHub Copilot) this seems to be far to common.

I really think these accounts poison the well on the more contentious topics.

It would be interesting to have a community where anonymous comments are separated from those with a name (or reputation / age, given you could still make throwaway accounts).

No? Just downvote bad comments.

Everyone on Hacker News is a bot.

Even you.

Even me.

HN could very well be the first victim of the "dead internet" theory. After all, the developers who write the bots probably hang out here and use this place as a benchmark for whether their bot can pass for real. HN may be entirely bots now, for all we know. ;)

It's probably why many users choose to use their real names.

(Or at least that's why I intentionally chose to use my real name, linked to my blog, etc., so that my comments would be easier to take seriously.)

Accounts with pseudonyms have a higher threshold to clear.

Nice try, GPT-3.

Hilarious!

Definitely

Throwaway accounts can't downvote.

That is the tool I'd use to manipulate HN.

Also can't flag, vouch and upvote in practice.

If throwaway account "comments" are a problem then all comments are a problem.

All systems (like the Stock Market) have mostly irrational actors already, the 'system' needs to smooth that out and get rational actors or rational data to the top. If it can't do it at the base level then it's already broken.

If you documented an example it'd help your case.

[edit] "all commenting in the same direction" I assume you mean negative, since that's the typical uneducated vapid bot-like comments you get on crypto. But it did occur to me later maybe you actually mean positive. Again why you need to document rather than having people do tasseography, you being a bot-like could be in the tea leaves on the second reading.

How about letting new accounts be lurkers for a few days, let's say 5 to 10 days?

What's your evidence that there are bots on here? There's nothing worse than people just throwing out conspiracy theories with nothing to back them.

And HN has a lot of internal protection against vote rigging, etc.

Of course there are bots here. It's a simple fact of running such a popular Internet site in the yard 2022, especially one with such a highly technical audience. What they do, and how much they post, if at all, is another question, but thinking there aren't bots, or at least computer aided readers and posting if you want to call it that here just seems naive.

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