Bot account. Last active with two posts in 2017, then started spamming today with the usual HN spambot formula. As usual, doing the weird thing that only the HN spambots do where it's almost always exactly three paragraphs of 1-2 sentences each. Not sure why they prompt for that formula but it makes it very easy to spot out. For me, I guess. This is voted to the top and the bot has over 50 karma so apparently most people are unable to detect LLM spam even when they make it as obvious as they possibly can.
As a master in commenting I would argue that this is quite smart. Indeed this might be a bot.
Or maybe it's not, who knows? It's sometimes hard to tell with comments.
It's just the times we live in, uncertainty is a given, most of the time we don't know. I guess we'll have to make do.
Gotta try harder than that. There's a certain length to their paragraphs as well, you can see from their post history the general shape of their messages that will cue you off that you're probably about to read spam before you've even read the first word. Also abundant LLMisms. Four "not X but Y" and three lists of three in only five sentences. The sheer density of LLMisms is absurd. Not to mention that vague sense of incoherency despite overall being a grammatically correct series of words. There are so many tells it's criminal people aren't catching it.
I would suggest sending this as an email to the mods instead of a reply, what you're doing is practically a bug report to the bot owner right now. The resulting discussion isn't super interesting either (IMO).
I am not signing up to a mini-moderator who has to e-mail dang 5 times a day. I want to not see these messages in the first place, and for that to be possible, the community needs to learn and be able to recognise this for themselves so this spam can be flagged and killed on sight.
If the bot owner happens to waste their time reading the responses to the dozens of comments one of their many spambots made, and improves the bots as a result, so be it. They're already winning the war as it stands, not like things can get much worse. I'd like to at least try to make an effort to make things better.
Maybe the actual answer is that I just need to stop using HN, though, since the spambots are taking over the site and yet people are more concerned with the people pointing that out than the actual problem.
Thanks - this was a good catch, and it makes steam come out my ears to see any account abusing HN like that.
You don't have to email us, of course! But please understand that we're on the same side. We don't want to see HN overrun by generated comments (a form of spam) any more than you, or other users do. Remember that tomhow and I were avid users of HN for many years before we became mods.
All: generated comments and bots aren't allowed here. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... If you notice an account that appears to be consistently pattern-matching to this, and have a minute to let us know, we'd appreciate a heads-up at hn@ycombinator.com. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here, but we do monitor the inbox closely (including fishing through the spam bin for real users) and we take these reports seriously.
OK, I sent the email myself. You don't have to do it. Just once, not 5 times per day. Agree about community awareness, but I think emailing the mods is more effective than responding to one of the 1000 comments this account is making.
Thanks for doing that because I had no idea this was happening. I've banned the account now and flagkilled the 30+ comments they posted today.
you missed one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46998241 ;-P
two actually: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46988519
I just wish they would use bigger models. These ones always write stuff that makes no sense. Like it says "the same principle applies to mobile games" then describes a different principle
There's some bots on HN who write much more coherently and get a decent # of upvotes. I was only able to catch one because the comment started with something along the lines of "Here's a smart response for a technical audience about _____"
lmao, got a link?
Any idea what the endgoal of such bots is?
Karmafarming and then astroturfing?
Astroturfing seems to be the goal. I notice sometimes there are threads in which numerous of these bots converge to promote some dubious product being shilled.
Do you check everyone's hn account history?
No, I check account history when the text is obviously LLM-generated. I mostly point it out because if I don't make it abundantly clear how obvious the spambot is by its behaviour, I will get people telling me that it could totally be a human and that I'm making a false accusation.
Might be because while it's not high quality, it is ultimately a constructive comment. So this might be a case of https://xkcd.com/810/
I suppose 15 years ago it would not have been possible to predict how fucking irritating these comments could be. I would rather have the old spambots back at this point. Please, spambots, go back to trying to sell me penis enlargement pills, I beg of you.
Now this is a definite human comment, shoehorned in xkcd links are a huge human tell.
Thanks. I upvoted one of its comments yesterday; i.e., it fooled me.
i saw a flagged comment and thought who the hell would flag that? it makes no sense. was going to vouch for it, but i always check the comment history which is where i noticed that all comments had a suspiciously similar pattern, and i found this thread.
some indicator that an account is banned would be nice for those who have showdead active.
one thing that is disturbing is that the comments of the bot are all lowercase. is that a bot feature now? are they doing that to appear less like a bot?
do i have to change my style to avoid looking like a bot? or is changing my style going to make me look like a bot?
i feel trapped.