Echochamber.js | Hacker News Reader

Echochamber.js

github.com

196 pointsduggan62 comments

So many one-liner garbage comments, no way to downvote.

Let's start by saying: cool, it's satire, and learning technologies through novel applications is the heart of hacking. I ain't even mad.

But no, shadowbanning is not cool. It was originally for spammers, not for real people you don't like. It's inconsiderate, because if effective, it wastes peoples' time writing comments they think people can read. Comments they believe contribute to the conversation. And it's not cool.

And to be clear to jMyles: This is trickery.

Disclaimer: I was shadowbanned many moons ago (hence the name now) for one comment out of hundreds I'd made on this site. That one comment was rude and terse, but not something unequivocally hateful or harmful. For that, I posted for weeks without knowing my comments re: the technologies and news I care about were being blocked. It's not cool.

You're lucky, some people don't find out for months, or years. Of course, actual trolls just make puppet accounts and bots can't be properly humiliated.

But I suppose that is the price we must pay for intellectual purity.

You need more reputation to be able to downvote.

I don't think that @unethical_ban is talking about downvoting the comments, but downvoting the submission itself. There is no "downvote" option for submissions, only upvote and flag.

oh no, I was talking about comments. And the parent is right, it comes along once you have enough karma.

> And the parent is right, it comes along once you have enough karma.

Yes, but only for comments, not for article submissions.

how did you eventually find out about the ban out of interest?

At least send the http request to https://devnull-as-a-service.com

It doesn't degrade gracefully on my Lynx browser and doesn't use any form of encryption when submitting comments, making it vulnerable to 3-letter agency interception.

I don't know if you're being sarcastic, but you realize it doesn't actually submit anything, right?

He was being sarcastic.

Which 3 letter agency do you work for?

Do you not understand how this code works, or are you also being sarcastic?

I'm guessing sarcastic. =))

No in-memory encryption though. In-brain encryption is the workaround, just type the resulting base64 into the input field.

Richard Stallman is that you?

Is this that PoC I heard about for a highly-scalable distributed successor to Reddit?

To be fair, this commenting model does ensure everyone's opinion gets equal reach.

You know what would be cool?

Something like this for a forum that simulates an admin panel, so when someone hacks in, they think they're causing all sorts of mischief.

It could be called a hellevator.

It'd also be neat to populate it randomly with other "users'" comments for further trickery.

Part of the ethical construct of the current form is that there is no trickery. The user sees the real, unadulterated data.

That is true. It would also betray the name echochamber. :)

What about Markov chain reconstructions of their own comments?

Markov chains need lots of training data to be useful. If you feed it just one comment, it pretty much reproduces that exact comment, maybe switching around or repeating a phrase somewhat.

Given the target commenter user base, I don't see that being an issue. ;)

There is something similar to that here: https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditSimulator/

The only difference is that you cannot comment.

My favorite place on Reddit. It's a goldmine of ridiculousness.

Had a quick google, couldn't find a corpus of spam blog posts. Surely somebody has one?

I hear someone just released the full corpus of Reddit comments...

Also use a chatbot script to randomly reply to the user's comments.

So this is like Reddit's shadowbanning.

The idea of a shadow ban predates reddit by quite a bit, but yeah it's a little bit similar

Tachy goes to coventry[0] was around before Reddit. Same basic thing.

[0]: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum/general/chit-chat/75468...

This is fantastic, I have been pondering about the usefulness of comments in the age of twitter/facebook/social media in general for a while. Not being exposed to the ramblings of random individuals would be a blessing.

On the other hand, a lot of times, I am only interested in comments, as the article itself is junk.

I am referring to comments on the page itself. I feel like that as well, when on HN or some other community I choose to listen to.

Do I need to point our the irony?

No, I do realize this is ironic. I am commenting about the "message" one might take away from the idea.

I am serious in my doubts about the usefulness comments on article/blog pages when there are lots of places that offer discussion in a more controlled way.

Quite amusing, but do you really want the trolls to feel engaged?

So they send the link to their outraged friends and you get the sweet sweet outrage click-revenue. Duh.

If you think you're a victim of shadow banning on Hacker News can you leave a comment here ;-)

Hey downvoters, get a sense of humour - sheesh.

Finally, effective decentralisation of the vacuous inane gossip that is the currency of our golden information age.

Hacker News needs to implement this in the comments for selected users.

HN already shadow-bans users.

They do already.

Some users' comments aren't visible to the public unless you have the "showdead" setting in your HN user preferences enabled.

That's basically Reddit's "shadowban"

So if you posted would you see other people's comments or only your own? Can someone setup a demo of this so we can test it out? seems intriguing

Only their own - as they wouldn't have access to any other users' local storage. That's the point.

They aren't actually commenting - they're saving data into their browser's localStorage which is getting read and fed onto the page when they view it.

Since they aren't actually commenting - there's no way of showing other people's comments.

Oh, then I would be somewhat suspicious only seeing a single comment, especially if the site is popular and there should be more comments.

I don't think they intend it to be used. If the title wasn't "echochamber" I would be more inclined to believe otherwise, but I'm leaning towards this being satire. It's a joke - just like DICSS [0].

[0] https://github.com/letsgetrandy/DICSS

Only your own. The comments are written to your LocalStorage.

Test comment

Troll level is over nine thousand. This is hilarious yet super effective. Would love to see this on YouTube comments, especially after it makes it on Reddit

perfect social engineering.

SEO's are gonna love this.

Beautiful

This is awesome. I hope it catches on.

I was considering making a comment system, but this is far more brilliant.

ppl who disagree with the national folk religion don't deserve to have opinions

if they wanted to make comments they should have been good ppl like me lulz

Greatest comment plugin ever made. Hands down.

Yeah, everyone on Hacker News hates the comments...

Can you make a version that works like Disqus but filters out anyone who disagrees with my opinions.

I'm guessing someone's already implemented this on HN judging by the downvotes ;-)

HN could use that on shadowbanned people. Now they would get replies to their comments.

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