[chubot]

Yeah that is nice, but ironically we can only have this discussion because Hacker News itself is not full of lemons

I can click on the profiles, and see "created 2009 or 2014", and think "OK this is probably a real person"

Whereas if this were Reddit or Instagram, and the account was created recently, I might think "that's AI spam".

So yeah someone has to do real work to create spaces that are not lemon markets. I guess people who have experienced that have coined "Dead Internet Theory"

(Although ironically, I would trust HN more on non-tech stuff like sleep masks, than I do on tech stuff. The tech stuff does have a bias towards what CEOs/investors think, although plenty of opposing opinions get voiced as well)

[jamestimmins]

When I research Reddit recommendations I always click into people's accounts to see old posts. If they have non brand safe posts (nswf, politics, profanity), I view them as more likely to be real.

Unclear if this is actually a good heuristic.