Two "comments" posted 27 seconds apart in different threads in the same formats.
Looks like this bot owner saw his first two comments 27 days ago got buried/flagged typing normally and decided to trick us with this new "I'm totally real, look at my lowercase writing!" soft-launch today.
This is interesting because while it’s far from the first bot account I’ve suspected, it’s the first one I’m positive is a bot. I wish it were possible to trace it back to the money.
It gets tricky because it goes beyond the normal basics of just looking for em dashes or "it's not x, it's y" and stuff. They've already caught onto that.
Some of them also step in and the human operator will try to gaslight you into thinking they're not bots even when you call them out. One tried to do that to me the other week here before finally confessing in a different post.
The same one where the human operator stepped in also made the same mistake as this one, not configuring their bot to wait long enough between comments. They were rapid firing multiple detailed comments seconds apart.
The idea of this one trying to use all lowercase and shorter comments to blend in was a nice idea though. Unfortunately something about it immediately threw me off.
Warning: brand new bot account (@dang)
Comment 1: 2026-02-24T18:45:05 1771958705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47140914
Comment 2: 2026-02-24T18:45:32 1771958732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47140922
Two "comments" posted 27 seconds apart in different threads in the same formats.
Looks like this bot owner saw his first two comments 27 days ago got buried/flagged typing normally and decided to trick us with this new "I'm totally real, look at my lowercase writing!" soft-launch today.
Post history: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dirtytoken7
> @dang
@dang doesn’t actually notify anybody. It isn’t guaranteed dang will see it
Email to hn@ycombinator.com, someone will see it
This is interesting because while it’s far from the first bot account I’ve suspected, it’s the first one I’m positive is a bot. I wish it were possible to trace it back to the money.
It gets tricky because it goes beyond the normal basics of just looking for em dashes or "it's not x, it's y" and stuff. They've already caught onto that.
Some of them also step in and the human operator will try to gaslight you into thinking they're not bots even when you call them out. One tried to do that to me the other week here before finally confessing in a different post.
The same one where the human operator stepped in also made the same mistake as this one, not configuring their bot to wait long enough between comments. They were rapid firing multiple detailed comments seconds apart.
The idea of this one trying to use all lowercase and shorter comments to blend in was a nice idea though. Unfortunately something about it immediately threw me off.