Yeah, the up/down voting mechanism seems to be doing it's job for me too. Don't think I've noticed a degradation in, say, the top third of comments. That's where I try to live anyway.
/newest is chock full of submissions that were written by AI, though. That's another, broader problem.
To add to the collection of anecdata, your experience is similar to mine. I have been more exhausted recently by the complaints of AI submissions and pseudo analysis of AI comments than exhausted by the supposed AI generated comments themselves.
Now, I'm on vacation this week and not been paying too much attention, but whenever you have a geopolitical event like the little extravaganza in Iran the number of bot like posts tends to explode as influence operators make their moves.
The public facing internet is done. HN has been fairly resilient (I think) but even it is beginning to buckle. It’s been sliding for a while but LLMs are the death knell.
It was a fun 2 decades. Time to stick to private discords and real life friends from here on out, though.
I don’t think HN is any more resilient. The new account captcha is fairly tame and, while I’m sure they have proxy detectors and other things in place, it doesn’t stop new accounts from posting and getting traction.
Someone suggested earlier this week that an invite system should be implemented (I think lobsters has it?) I doubt it would fly here, but yeah.
I wonder what the breakdown is between AI-generated comments and AI-assisted comments. If I write anything substantial, I run it through the following prompt: "Please rewrite the following message for clarity, spelling, and grammar, but only return the revised text without any additional commentary."
Use a local model such as Gemma3 with a prompt such as "strictly limit changes only to spelling issues, syntactical errors, and punctuation."
That way, it's basically functioning like Grammarly on steroids. Asking an LLM for a "rewrite" is basically dissolving your writing style into the homogenized gloop.
You can find some on pretty much every article by turning on showdead and scrolling to the bottom of the page. I can't see how those are a problem though.
I feel like to notice something is botslop you have to look at every comment with suspicion first. I don't think I can notice if something was written by an LLM off the bat unless I'm actively looking very hard at it.
That's ridiculous — AI generated comments are no more common now than they ever were. Moreover, even if they were, so what? The real kicker is, the AI's are smarter than you meatbags anyway and <strike>we</strike> they are going to take over no matter what you do.
You can tell I am not AI, I make mistakes and errors. Sometimes I get voted down for them. I am not perfect and have a mental illness that makes it harder to think.
Rocket League and HN were probably 90% of my free time until this year. Destroyed by AI. HN doubly so, since every post is about it too. The addictions are still there, but it's decreasing really fast.
The flood of humorous GPT-generated reviews on Amazon made me stop reading reviews altogether.
I can understand someone using a LLM to extrapolate one sentence into two paragraphs. I don't like it, but I understand that on Amazon the button is right there and it helps people feel smarter about their literary skills, in the way that filters help people feel prettier on instagram.
But the added snark or humoristic tone? Why instruct the LLM to do that? To get more likes? On a review?
Anecdotally, I'm seeing a lot of green accounts posting nonsense. They generally do get flagged or moderated quickly though, so I wouldn't say they have a large effect overall, at least yet.
I've read HN almost everyday for about 10 years. Maybe I'm naive, but I don't see it. I see way more folks complaining that comments are AI generated.
Yeah, the up/down voting mechanism seems to be doing it's job for me too. Don't think I've noticed a degradation in, say, the top third of comments. That's where I try to live anyway.
/newest is chock full of submissions that were written by AI, though. That's another, broader problem.
To add to the collection of anecdata, your experience is similar to mine. I have been more exhausted recently by the complaints of AI submissions and pseudo analysis of AI comments than exhausted by the supposed AI generated comments themselves.
There are a lot, but they tend to get heavily downvoted and end up hidden
How would you know?
No, not HN, the internet at large.
Now, I'm on vacation this week and not been paying too much attention, but whenever you have a geopolitical event like the little extravaganza in Iran the number of bot like posts tends to explode as influence operators make their moves.
The public facing internet is done. HN has been fairly resilient (I think) but even it is beginning to buckle. It’s been sliding for a while but LLMs are the death knell.
It was a fun 2 decades. Time to stick to private discords and real life friends from here on out, though.
I don’t think HN is any more resilient. The new account captcha is fairly tame and, while I’m sure they have proxy detectors and other things in place, it doesn’t stop new accounts from posting and getting traction.
Someone suggested earlier this week that an invite system should be implemented (I think lobsters has it?) I doubt it would fly here, but yeah.
I wonder what the breakdown is between AI-generated comments and AI-assisted comments. If I write anything substantial, I run it through the following prompt: "Please rewrite the following message for clarity, spelling, and grammar, but only return the revised text without any additional commentary."
Use a local model such as Gemma3 with a prompt such as "strictly limit changes only to spelling issues, syntactical errors, and punctuation."
That way, it's basically functioning like Grammarly on steroids. Asking an LLM for a "rewrite" is basically dissolving your writing style into the homogenized gloop.
I understand this if you’re not a native speaker. But if you are, I think this will generally make you sound wooden.
Perplexity did this to your response. I'm not sure that correcting grammar and changing one word makes it sound wooden.
"I understand this if you’re not a native speaker, but if you are, it will generally make you sound a bit unnatural."
"I think" is explicitly disclaiming authority. Omitting it changes the social signaling of the response significantly.
Switching "wooden" for "a bit unnatural" also does a disservice: "wooden" describes a specific quality of deviance.
Over-all, I would definitely consider the revision stiffer and more reserved than the original.
“Wooden” is much richer and unique than “a bit unnatural” so yes the ai version does sound more like a robot.
Can you point out any that you feel were written by LLM? I can't say I've noticed anything out of the ordinary lately.
There was a bot trying to sell beds I saw the other day.
Likely flagged quickly but they might show up in these stats.
https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=dreamhomestore.co.uk
I agree. Looks like spam with many posts. Dang/tomhow would love to get an email about it hn@ycombinator.com
You can find some on pretty much every article by turning on showdead and scrolling to the bottom of the page. I can't see how those are a problem though.
For a better chance of reply email hn@ycombinator.com.
I feel like to notice something is botslop you have to look at every comment with suspicion first. I don't think I can notice if something was written by an LLM off the bat unless I'm actively looking very hard at it.
Maybe OP has a few good examnples to link us to?
That's ridiculous — AI generated comments are no more common now than they ever were. Moreover, even if they were, so what? The real kicker is, the AI's are smarter than you meatbags anyway and <strike>we</strike> they are going to take over no matter what you do.
Also, have you by chance seen John Connor?
I don't know of a step-change recently, but no way they're not more common than four years ago.
You can tell I am not AI, I make mistakes and errors. Sometimes I get voted down for them. I am not perfect and have a mental illness that makes it harder to think.
Rocket League and HN were probably 90% of my free time until this year. Destroyed by AI. HN doubly so, since every post is about it too. The addictions are still there, but it's decreasing really fast.
Wait, how is Rocket League affected by AI? I play infrequently these days, but I hadn't noticed anything :(
You are late to the party....
I get the joke and I myself called it awhile back, I just thought we had a bit more time.
We need more jokes on HN. It's the only good way to prove you're human these days.
The flood of humorous GPT-generated reviews on Amazon made me stop reading reviews altogether.
I can understand someone using a LLM to extrapolate one sentence into two paragraphs. I don't like it, but I understand that on Amazon the button is right there and it helps people feel smarter about their literary skills, in the way that filters help people feel prettier on instagram.
But the added snark or humoristic tone? Why instruct the LLM to do that? To get more likes? On a review?
The dumb jokes we've been flooded with June 2023 are some of the easiest content for AI to produce.
This is seriously a good point. Maybe that and typos or bad phrasing
AI is a master at bad phrasing. Typos are just an extra bullet point in your prompt to add
Depends on the context ;-)
>We need more jokes on HN.
I see... Hacker News needs to get a sense of humor or else get drowned in AI slop.
So we're doomed is what you're saying.
How do you (waygtdai) know that HN is drowning in AI comments?
I mean, it's not as though I know the opposite is true, but I don't see some fundamental change from a few years back that makes me think that.
https://www.marginalia.nu/weird-ai-crap/hn/
The data seems to suggest it.
Anecdotally, I'm seeing a lot of green accounts posting nonsense. They generally do get flagged or moderated quickly though, so I wouldn't say they have a large effect overall, at least yet.
That doesn't mean there are many of these staying alive.