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Comment by edoceo | Hacker News Reader

Maybe just adding down-vote to submissions would do?

We have “flag”

As far as I understand, "flagging" is intended for things that break the guidelines. AI-generated content is explicitly banned, but only in comments, not submissions.

I think it would be great if AI-generated submissions were outright banned as they fundamentally break the balance of effort that HN was built upon, but as was already stated by another user, YC is heavily invested in AI so there's a conflict of interest there.

Not posting for self promotion is in the guidelines. I have to assume anyone pushing out AI articles is primarily looking for traffic and self promotion, as they didn’t care enough about the topic to write their own opinion.

Self promotion isn't banned, otherwise Show HNs wouldn't exist. The exact guideline, emphasis mine:

> Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.

Do the guidelines even matter if they're not enforced? This place is drowning in AI shovelware submissions from accounts that are only used for self promotion.

Consensus ultimately determines what the guidelines are. There’s no one enforcing how “flag” is being used (i.e. you are not asked why you want to flag something.) Guideline or not, I’m using “flag” on content that I feel absolutely does not belong on HN. If enough people hold the same sentiment and flag a particular post for being AI-generated, then it falls off the home page because it was AI-generated.

Hn rarely allows people to downvote,only after you become an active member for many years

And im sure this was designed in order to encourage positive discussion

There is no longer a downvote on submissions.

Do you know the reason? Allowing down voting on comments but not on submissions?

This could be a false memory, but I think it’s the idea that the submission downvotes should be reserved for things that break the rules, and in that case, the post should be flagged instead.

Shouldn’t that be the case for comments too then?

As for the ability to downvote comments, my understanding is that the only requirement is having at least 500 karma.

As of a few years ago I can confirm that. Don't need (as stated by GP) to be active for years, at least, depending on how much and what/where/when you post. Being the first reasonable-sounding or insider-knowledge comment on a new article that then becomes popular gets you ~1/7th of the way with 2 minutes of effort per attempt; being the first to post from an RSS feed of a here-popular blog can get you +500 points in a single go. Just posting regularly, not doing anything special to farm, will get you there in a few months

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