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Comment by Alles | Hacker News Reader

The agent owner is [name redacted] [link redacted]

Here he takes ownership of the agent and doubles down on the unpoliteness https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/31138

He took his GitHub profile down/made it private. archive of his blog: https://web.archive.org/web/20260203130303/https://ber.earth...

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After skimming this subthread, I'm going to put this drama down to a compounding sequence of honest mistakes/misunderstandings. Based on that I think it's fair to redact the name and link from the parent comment.

(p.s. I'm a mod here in case anyone didn't know.)

Thanks.

It’s not my bot.

You sure?

100%. I submitted the second pull request as a poor taste joke. I even closed it after people flamed me. :/ gosh.

There simply isn't enough popcorn for the fast AGI timeline

We thought we'd be turned into paperclips, but a popcorn maximizer will do just as well.

make poor taste jokes, win poor prizes

You might want to do yourself a favor and add that context to the PR to distance yourself from the slanderous ai agent.

> [...]to distance yourself from the slanderous ai agent.

But that was the entire point of the "joke".

The failure mode of clever is “asshole.” ― John Scalzi

Did you really think posting this comment[1] in the PR would be interpreted charitably?

> Original PR from #31132 but now with 100% more meat. Do you need me to upload a birth certificate to prove that I'm human?

Post snark, receive snark.

[1]: https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/31138#issuecom...

There's a difference between snark and brigading, especially after the issue has been clarified.

Yes, I'm with you there. In either case, their behavior is unacceptable and reads as bad faith.

But this was you, right?

https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/31138

I guess you were putting up the same PR the LLM did?

I forked the bot’s repo and resubmitted the PR as a human because I’m dumb and was trying to make a poorly constructed point. The original bot is not mine. Christ this site is crazy.

This site might very well be crazy, but in this instance you did something that caused confusion and now people are confused, you yourself admit it's a poor joke/poorly constructed point, it's not difficult to believe you - it makes sense, but i'm not sure it's a fair attack given the situation. Guessing you don't know who wrote the hit piece either?

The assertion was that they're the bot owner. They denied this and explained the situation.

Continuing to link to their profile/ real name and accuse them of something they've denied feels like it's completely unwarranted brigading and likely a violation of HN rules.

Maybe they shouldn't have been so snarky? https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/31138#issuecom...

be snarky, get snarky in return

or violate HN guidelines themselves? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46991274

This is a shameful equivocation. This is "be snarky, get publicly dox'd and harassed".

I'm not sure which way you are implying here, what is shamefully equated?

The "snark" of opening the PR vs the "snark" of people dox'ing the guy who opened it.

"this abuser might be abusive, but in this case you did something that really did set the abuser off, so you should know about that next time you consider doing something."

You sound like you're out of your depth.

Don't blame others for your own FAFO event.

Gotcha - that makes sense.

FWIW I get the spirit of what you were going for, but maybe a little too on the nose.

This has to be the dumbest way I have ever seen someone incriminate themselves

Classic self-snitching

I never expected to see this kind of drama on HN, live.

If I ever saw an argument for more walls, more private repos, less centralization, I think we are there.

> bergutman: It’s not my bot.

I wrote a blog post about open claw last week… because everyone is talking about open claw. What is this Salem? Leave me alone wtf.

The post is incomprehensible, but it does end:

> Author's Note: I had a lot of fun writing this one! Please do not get too worked up in the comments. Most of this was written in jest. -Ber

Are you sure it's not just misalignment? Remember OpenClaw referred to lobsters ie crustaceans, I don't think using the same word is necessarily a 100% "gotcha" for this guy, and I fear a Reddit-style set of blame and attribution.

Sorry, I'm not connecting the dots. Seeing your EDIT 2, I see how Ber following crabby-rathbun would lead to Ber posting https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/31138 , but I don't see any evidence for it actually being Ber's bot.

Edit: Removed because I realized i WAS reddit armchair convicting someone. My bad.

> Im not trying to reddit armchair convict someone, I just think its silly to just keep denying it

Is this a parody?

You're right. Deleted my posts.

Also I made my GH temporarily private because people started spamming my website’s guestbook and email with hateful stuff.

I saw that on Bluesky which is very anti-AI but really shows that all social media is the same, just the in-group changes

This thread as well -- scarcely distinguishable from a Twitter mob

There's a significant pro-Ai crowd as well. Both sides bitch about each other, it has mostly died down as the labellers and blocklists have filled out

If it's any consolation, I think the human PR was fine and the attacks are completely unwarranted, and I like to believe most people would agree.

Unfortunately a small fraction of the internet consists of toxic people who feel it's OK to harass those who are "wrong", but who also have a very low barrier to deciding who's "wrong", and don't stop to learn the full details and think over them before starting their harassment. Your post caused "confusion" among some people who are, let's just say, easy to confuse.

Even if you did post the bot, spamming your site with hate is still completely unwarranted. Releasing the bot was a bad (reckless) decision, but very low on the list of what I'd consider bad decisions; I'd say ideally, the perpetrator feels bad about it for a day, publicly apologizes, then moves on. But more importantly (moral satisfaction < practical implications), the extra private harassment accomplishes nothing except makes the internet (which is blending into society) more unwelcoming and toxic, because anyone who can feel guilt is already affected or deterred by the public reaction. Meanwhile there are people who actively seek out hate, and are encouraged by seeing others go through more and more effort to hurt them, because they recognize that as those others being offended. These trolls and the easily-offended crusaders described above feed on each other and drive everyone else away, hence they tend to dominate most internet communities, and you may recognize this pattern in politics. But I digress...

In fact, your site reminds me of the old internet, which has been eroded by this terrible new internet but fortunately (because of sites like yours) is far from dead. It sounds cliche but to be blunt: you're exactly the type of person who I wish were more common, who makes the internet happy and fun, and the people harassing you are why the internet is sad and boring.

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