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Comment by gaylemcd | Hacker News Reader

Hi, ACTUALLY Gayle Laakmann McDowell here. This substack is not mine. It is an impersonation. I reported but substack hasn't deleted yet. I commented and I was, of course, banned.

(And please upvote this so people see :). Also, feel free to comment on the substack that this is an impersonation.)

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I submitted this post on HN thinking it belonged to you. I guess I made the matters worse and brought more traffic to the site. I don’t see the delete option now. I am really sorry. Please let me know if there is anything I can do

Yeah this is really odd. If you had a personal blog and someone was just copy/pasting your articles to Substack in order to get subscribers I could see it. But based on your comments below it sounds like you didn't even write this (or accept a guest post), it's a complete fabrication in terms of author and post. TBH I wonder if this is a ChatGPT post though it seems almost more like someone is whining and wanted to use your credentials to get on top of HN.

The formatting of the paragraphs definitely gives Credence to the idea that this could be chat GPT

Damn, that’s rough. I am sorry this happened to you. I hope it’s taken down soon.

Doesn’t detract from the fact that your books are excellent, though! Thank you, they’ve helped me very much at certain points in my career!

Edit: They’re referring to it as a “guest post” now in the comments - ridiculous.

Hi Gayle. I've emailed the HN moderator, referencing this comment and your tweet. Hopefully the impersonated site can at least be banned on HN.

This is already the third submission from it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=gaylelaakmann.substac...

We've banned it. Thanks.

What is the gain in this impersonation? Seems weird af to me.

Get traffic, sell subscriptions / products

Sure but if you can churn this out why not do it organically, or if you must fabricate: through a persona?

I can't imagine this pays off once the real person finds out and gets it closed.

It's gone now.

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