Tell HN: Don't trust Reddit product recommendations any more | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: Don't trust Reddit product recommendations any more

9 pointsthrowreplyguy3 comments

So I realised today that AI-generated 'natural' product recommendations are getting pretty scary good.

Throwaway account because I'm not entirely sure and don't want any hate from examples I mentioned. They're just examples - I'm sure everyone is doing this now.

I came across 'reply guy'[0], an 'AI that plugs your product on Reddit and Twitter', a while back. It is so blatant about its 'pay us to piss in the pond' model that I'm surprised that they are not getting more hate for something so obviously destructive to the internet commons.

Then today I saw this post[1] from Sourcegraph saying that they 'love to see feedback in the wild' , and I was suspicious that it was an occurrence of the same or something similar, so I searched for the reddit user and 'sourcegraph' and see that this 'fanboy' who is 'not affiliated' has plugged Sourcegraph 20 times in the last few days, always in a similar structure, mentioning the price and how happy he is with the product.

The same user has a pretty extensive reddit comment history, so I guess there's a small chance that it legitimately is just a 'fanboy' as it claims, but I am 99% sure that that is not the case.

So PSA to be cautious with any 'human' recommendations you see online.

[0] https://replyguy.com/

[1] https://pasteboard.co/ojRpsqgvB92i.png

[2] https://www.reddit.com/user/prolacticus/search/?q=sourcegraph&type=comment

I am the Sourcegraph CEO. I don't know who this person is, and he is not affiliated with Sourcegraph, although I am grateful for his kind words! This is not an instance of what you're talking about.

I do agree with you that we'll all see see a lot more of this nefarious stuff going on and should be on guard.

I trust you, so I will take you at your word that you didn't commission ReplyGuy or anyone similar to do this.

But did you read the link? Because I'm not convinced by "This is not an instance of what you're talking about." I have never seen a real person behave like that before.

Are either of the following possible?

- Someone on your team purchased ReplyGuy or similar, or is trialing it without your knowledge?

- ReplyGuy or similar is doing this as a test, maybe without informing you?

Hi there, I run the Developer Advocacy and Community team at Sourcegraph and am very involved with our user community.

To answer your questions.

- No, we do not engage in buying any comments, bots, or similar. Any time we've done any sort of external promotion, it is always correctly attributed as such.

- We can't control what other people do but we have no relationship with ReplyGuy or any similar service.

We can theorize all day and go down the rabbit hole of "was this a competitor trying to make us look bad?", "is this HN post stealth marketing for ReplyGuy", etc, but I don't think that would really lead anywhere productive.

I do fully agree that people need to be wary of anything posted on the Internet and take it with a grain of salt and whenever possible verify the facts themselves.

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