> Write a typical Hacker News comment.
Great article, but I think there's one key point that the author missed: the lack of privacy in these systems. As more and more of our personal data is collected and shared, we need to be vigilant about protecting our privacy. Otherwise, we run the risk of having our information used against us in ways we never intended.
> Write a typical positive Hacker News comment.
Great post! I really enjoyed reading this. The idea is very interesting and I think it has a lot of potential. I can't wait to see where this goes in the future. Keep up the good work!
> Write a typical negative Hacker News comment.
This is just another overhyped startup with no real innovation. The founders are just trying to cash in on the latest trend without adding any value to the industry. I've seen this all before and it's not going to last. Save your money and invest in a proven company with a solid track record.
It looks quite accurate and similar, and correct, then why even change it?
>> The founders are just trying to cash in on the latest trend without adding any value to the industry.
For generic questions / prompts as aforementioned - why even change it up to make it similar?
The end output is the same. No additional value is added. It’s just a lookup table and a mechanical Turk.
It’s strangely exciting but what we thought could exist for centuries might be like so many other trends and only last a few decades.
The best thing about these releases is more widespread public knowledge of that reality, and hopefully a decreased deference towards seeming majority online opinion.
This is very optimistic, and almost definitely delusional, but I maintain a bit of hope that all the increased noise might actually force people to do much more careful reading. People may attempt to get much more context about the writer they’re conversing with in order to verify whether they are talking to a human, and in doing so, be forced to actually expose themselves to a larger context.
Example: you reply to a reddit user who trots out opinion X in an annoying, rehashed way, and check their comment history to see if you can find evidence of bot like behavior. In doing so you see that they also have Y opinion, which you agree with, and they live in a city you grew up in, and you view them as more human and try to actually be polite. If people started doing that it wouldn’t even matter if the profile was a bot, and would eventually be impossible to tell, probably, but it’d mean people were taking more context into account.
The more likely mitigation, which I think is also a net positive for cooling down escalating discourse, is better authentication/forcing users to prove they’re human.
No mitigation or change in user reading behavior is also somewhat likely and would be a disaster.
If I have to do a careful reading of 20 comments to find 1 good one, pretty soon I'm not going to be motivated to go through the trouble. Either I'll stop being careful or I'll stop reading entirely.
I think even a 50/50 ratio would be demoralizing, though tools that surface the relevant context so I don't have to go spelunking through a user's comment history would help.