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Comment by dcreater | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

Would you please not cross into personal attacks on HN? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We've already had to ask you this, and we end up banning accounts that keep breaking the site guidelines this way.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46715512 (Jan 2026)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45022369 (Aug 2025)

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

I think my comment was a dissenting opinion, not a personal attack. Its troubling that such a comment would be considered crossing a line

Telling someone they are not only "introducing more slop into the language" but even "trying to introduce more slop into the language" is clearly pejorative.

Also, "for the love of God" is an internet snark trope which both signals and amplifies negativity. You can think of it as a minus sign, or perhaps a triple minus sign.

I would not classify this putdown as a "dissenting opinion" because if you take away the pejoratives and the signals of negative sentiment, there is little if any information left.

I'm broadly with you on disliking OP's comment because it is needlessly negative, but I don't think it quite rises to the standard of a personal attack.

Accusing the author of introducing slop into the language by coining (or using) a new term is a criticism of the author's work, not the author himself.

It's akin to saying, "Your work has a negative side effect which I don't like." Which clearly would've been the nicer way to say it.

Interpretations differ, of course. I'd say any internet comment of the form "Please $Person. For the love of god stop trying to do $bad-thing" is clearly over that line, and snarky to boot.

I know "personal attack" sounds pretty strong, but the closer one is to being the target of such an attack, the more it feels like that—and there's absolutely no need to make a point that way.

I'm sorry, how was that a personal attack?

I answered that in the sibling (cousin?) comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47114810.

[flagged]

Simon Willison claims to be an "Independent AI researcher"[1]:

but then at the top of this article:

> Sponsored by: Teleport — Secure, Govern, and Operate AI at Engineering Scale. Learn more

not exactly a coherent narrative, is it?

[1]: https://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net

I wrote a little note about that here - it even opens with "I value my credibility as an independent voice" https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/19/sponsorship/

I get (incorrectly) accused of writing undisclosed sponsored content pretty often, so I'm actually hoping that the visible sponsor banner will help people resist that temptation because they can see that the sponsorship is visible, not hidden.

> I value my credibility as an independent voice

not enough to not take their money though?

insipid

I'm currently planning to avoid sponsorship from companies that I regularly write about for that reason.

That's actually a cleaner editorial standard than most publications follow. The major risk in tech journalism isn't disclosed sponsorships — it's the undisclosed access journalism where coverage tone shifts to maintain relationships. Visible banners beat invisible influence every time.

Honestly, after his ~23 years of writing online I think he's fairly earned the title as an independent researcher. He added those sponsorships three days ago; perhaps wait to raise your alarm bells until he actually writes about a sponsor.

You know I helped popularize "slop"? I get credited by Wikipedia as an "early champion": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_slop

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