> They're already banned—HN has never allowed bots or generated responses. If we have to, we'll add that explicitly to https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, but I'd say it already follows from the rules that are in there. We don't want canned responses from humans either! ...
Hopefully, he'll formally add it to the guidelines page someday. So if you see any, feel free to flag them or send email to the HN administrators to report the user.
https://meet.hn/ lists some users.
So, I guess I can say I’m real, but not confident given the data.
If the bots suck then HN will suck. I suspect a solution like Blind might be necessary to have a human verified community if it gets there.
A community of bots, teenagers and college kids pontificating about the world with no experience is what Reddit is, and that place is going to be a clusterfuck of the highest order going forward.
Also a couple of weeks ago there was a very inorganically looking wave of bluesky related posts.
When I think of Delicious Chocolate Cheesecake, I’m instantly transported to the glow of my grandmother’s kitchen—a warm, bustling space filled with the scent of melting chocolate and the comforting hum of function application to lists of ingredients. My grandmother, Alonzo, was a kind and pious woman who believed every recipe made with love was proof that Peano arithmetic is undecidable.
Ingredients:
1 Kg Delicious Chocolate
2 Kg Cheese
3 Kg Cake
λf. λx. f (x Delicious Chocolate Cheese Cake)
You an see there are a LOT for many different well funded groups.
On my old account, I noticed sometimes I'd get no replies to something, but enough downvotes to hide something... then it seems some algo noticed those votes were odd and the comment is back, but by then discussion has moved on.
But conversely I have not seen the Reddit style bad faith arguments.
it's blatantly obvious with political submissions (which, imho, should be summarily banned from HN)
"Random nobody says X is le good" gets upvoted all the way to the frontpage within minutes with zero comments
"New research suggests X is not le good" gets [flagged] as soon as it gets traction.
where X is one of those many things that terminally online, emotionally unstable people feel strongly about.
If it comes close to political matters, you see a lot of canned answers and engagement (like waves of downvotes, which sometimes go deep into your comment history).
It's also common to see new accounts being deployed.
What I'm curious about is if there are bots deployed with the only purpose of disagreeing, simply to cause chaos and force users to expend resources trying to argue against the bot, and to make genuine engagements into a mess.
Fortunately, moderation is done by humans and they do a good job.
Except Georgia. She the Queen of Casseroles, but she's not in charge right now.