High quality anecdata are exactly the reason why I love HN. Thanks for posting about it.
> fake AI accounts
Second, what is the purpose of these accounts? Are they basically running submarine adverts, or are they just trolling (to harm the community)?
Eagerness.. you let them work through a endless labyrinth of forms. While the human drops out after the 2nd form- the ai is willing to go all the way always.
Don't you lose really users by making it easy for bots to complete a sign up, but hard for humans?
Maybe 5 required fields and 30 optional fields. Apart from "census dweebs" [1] I don't know of many people that fill in more than the required.
[1]: https://thebeaverton.com/2026/05/local-nerd-disappointed-he-...
A starting point for study;
AI Deception: A Survey of Examples, Risks, and Potential Solutions - https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.14752
Deception Analysis with Artificial Intelligence: An Interdisciplinary Perspective - https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.05724
Some background (pre-AI) ;
Online Deception in Social Media - https://cacm.acm.org/research/online-deception-in-social-med...