[magicalhippo]

The problem is that we might lose some gold.

Not too seldom have I seen the author or a significant party of a story chime in through a fresh green account, as they were alerted by the story being posted here one way or another. And usually when they do it's very interesting.

As such I would find it detrimental if they had to jump through too many hoops so they don't bother or it takes too long so the thread dies before they can participate.

[dang]

Indeed. Here is a recent litmus test: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47051852. How can we filter the lightweight stuff while still benefiting from posts like these?

(a bit more about this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47056384, with a reply from the OP)

[jedberg]

One thing we did at reddit for a while was put posts from new people in "jail". They would show up in a special yellow box at the top of the home page to accounts that tended to be early upvoters of things that became successful later (our Nostradamusus so to speak), and then if it got enough upvotes from that group it got out of jail and placed on the regular /new page.

So maybe some sort of filter like that? Only show it to those kinds of accounts at first?

The downside is that if that group isn't big enough you get a lot of groupthink, but if your sample is wide enough, it can be avoided. To be honest, I don't recall why we stopped doing it.

[wizardforhire]

Just sharing observations it may help, it may not…

what I’m seeing is new or sleeper accounts that have been idle for over a decade with low (<99) karma getting into comment circles. Over the last couple of weeks i’ll see several top comments on articles with back and forth between other similar accounts… it’s got to the point that I check a user habitually before I even bother reading… and I have never hidden so many comments before getting to something substantive in the comments…

Like many here, I don’t wish to limit new users, but this does seem from my armchair perspective to be a pattern to be on the look out for.

[Teever]

This is interesting. Can you link to some of these?

I've noticed this kind of behavior on Reddit but never on HM

[hananova]

Maybe have a signup flow where you can skip the new account restriction by putting some file on a website of some currently trending link. And then the restriction is lifted temporarily for the thread linking to it?

[LordDragonfang]

Not every post is from the website of the person who is the topic of it. It's common to have e.g. a blogpost about $thing and then a new account chimes in with "Hey, I authored $thing 10 years ago when I was working for $company, someone linked me this post. [some contributions to the topic]"

[gorgoiler]

I have often heard that vote rigging is detectable on HN because the site software penalizes voting from accounts at the same IP address.

Rumor had it that there is also some kind of social-network metric detecting when socially adjacent accounts (or alts) are engaged in astroturfing, the practice where a small cabal tries to pass themselves off as a broader grassroots campaign.

Flip that around though and the same metrics might allow new accounts to be meaningfully vouched for by existing ones.

[mudkipdev]

I think vote rigging detection might be based on the length of your session

[throwaway2037]

Sorry, I need to ask the dumb question: Is that Show HN (AsteroidOS) post written by an LLM or not? Honestly, I cannot tell.

A few people in these comments seem wildly confident that it is written by an LLM. If anything, I hope it was written by a human as an elaborate troll to trigger these so-called immaculate LLM detectors.

[Terretta]

Interesting litmus test, as the post isn't just green, it's riddled with LLM copyediting. Doesn't read as if originally composed by an LLM, so there's that.

Would seem to require some discernment to classify. Not all assistive use is slop.

[bergheim]

Some litmus test. I am sooo tired of statements like "No x. No y. No z." and then optionally "Just Foo.".

Who aside from Fred fucking Durst writes like that?

Ugh... Clearly llm generated. This is how internet has become. 90% of posts are variations of tropes like these.

[throwaway2037]

    > I am sooo tired of statements like "No x. No y. No z." and then optionally "Just Foo.".  Who aside from Fred fucking Durst writes like that?

I disagree. This is a classic humor template in popular magazines from the 1990s and 2000s. The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" probably has/had this style frequently. Also, (Timothy) McSweeney's Quarterly Concern is basically an extended trope of exactly this type of writing from 1990s and 2000s.

[dang]

I mean I guess you're right - I didn't notice it, because the community reaction to the project was so positive.

> Not all assistive use is slop.

That's right, and the key is to discern which posts/projects are interesting.

[thinkingemote]

The discussion about the LLM assisted/written submission at the time, with replies by the author: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47055300 The defence given was essentially "just reformatted it for better grammar"

It's obviously says LLM to me at first read through.

I suspect that:

a) less people are willing to expend a bit of energy to notice LLM usage given how much of it is. ("we've lost" theory)

b) that people are losing the ability to detect LLM submissions. ("we're cooked" theory)

or c) that people don't care about the use of LLM. ("who cares" theory).

Personally I've been feeling less invested, because it seems as if most users don't care and even the main users of the site don't notice it.

[trinsic2]

Do you have any good links to guides on how to spot? I would like to care, but its hard to tell. and then what do we do when we spot it?

[thinkingemote]

One guide that i hope is kept up to date: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing . Generally though it's a kind of pattern recognition which for some patterns seems visible to me.

I should clarify and revise my thoughts and initial comment. I do not think that not being able to detect it leads to lack of care. I actually think that many things have passed me by and in the future this will be even more as LLMs improve ("we're cooked").

As to "what do we do when we spot it" - you hit the nail on the head of the feelings I felt as I was writing the comment. What do we actually do, what can we change and should we attempt futile things?

And even the example dang gave - the actual submission as very good. Is any amount of LLM use okay and what's the level? I use LLMs at work but I don't like writing readmes or blog posts with it. But others might like writing code at work by hand and don't like writing text so use LLMs for that. Maybe I lower my expectations!

[kazinator]

You would need, say, a StackExchange-like crowdsourced moderation system whereby users with relatively high karma are randomly selected to check posts from new account, by casting votes to reject or keep.

[LordDragonfang]

HN already has something like that -- high-karma accounts can flag comments/posts which are a poor fit for HN. It's just a blacklist, not a whitelist.

[rl3]

>How can we filter the lightweight stuff while still benefiting from posts like these?

Well, the simplest automated method would be to run the post and comment together through an LLM with a prompt that's roughly:

"Is this person claiming to be the author or co-creator of the work discussed in this submission?"

Only green accounts subject to it. I predict you'd probably have a very low false positive and false negative rate.

It's of course a terribly slippery slope. My perhaps overly-cynical take is that once the infra is place some of your bosses would be prone to eventually abusing it.

Personally I'm here for it: Dang, moderator turned whistleblower—on the run from dark VC money—in a race against time to save freedom. Still working on a title for the film.

[valeena]

I can't wait to watch this movie. I'm already sold by plot!

[rl3]

Tentative working title is:

McDang II: You Have the Right to Remain Shadowbanned

[hinkley]

Responding from a new account is different from posting from a new account. You aren’t vetting people by making accounts have a minimum age to post articles. That’ll just cause people to make accounts before they need them.

Reddit has forums where you need a minimum karma to post to certain subreddits and that is typically upvotes on your comments, but it could also be upvotes on someone else’s moderated subreddit.

[trinsic2]

I think the right people will stick around. There is a certain kind of indivudal that has the paitence to understand that a system that restricts new accounts from post is a good thing. Of recent, there have been a lot of posters that come here from the open web just to try and slant opinion.

[mastazi]

But sticking around doesn't solve the scenario mentioned by parent.

1. some interesting projects gets to HN main page

2. author of the project is not on HN so creates a green account and interacts

even if that person would have the patience to stick around, by the time they would be able to respond, it would be too late for it to be relevant to the (now stale) discussion.

[qingcharles]

This is one of the best things about HN. The sheer number of times someone has posted a link and the author or someone significant to the project deep within some megacorp makes a green account and starts answering questions that you never thought would get answered. Some of the most golden replies come from greenies.

[dang]

Yes, and we've always gone out of our way to protect those. It's perhaps the thing I hate the most about our software that sometimes it kills such posts.

[ddingus]

These are some of the best interactions we have here.

For sure a problem worth considering.

I can't think of anything easy...

Only even remotely sensible thought I have at present:

We add a check box to replies created by new accounts. Maybe created by all accounts?

The prompt reads something to the effect of: I am mentioned in the article. And then they get to say how.

-This is my project -I am mentioned by name -Etc...

Whatever it is they wrote, appears somehow, maybe as a required line or something.

Others can see that and either flag the account or vouch.

This at least some what distributes the required attention load.

That said, I don't like it. Have nothing better, so here it is!

Then others seeing that

[thaumasiotes]

> even if that person would have the patience to stick around, by the time they would be able to respond, it would be too late for it to be relevant to the (now stale) discussion

This is a fundamental part of how HN sees its own functioning; they refer to it as "rate limiting".

[brudgers]

I believe HN's success is in large part not presuming to have a good idea of what "the right people" are.

This doesn't mean it doesn't have a strong sense of what bad behavior is. It clearly does.

[wizzwizz4]

I am only that kind of individual when I'm inclined to post unconstructively – not that I know that, at the time. When I'm feeling constructive, friction is likely to make me take my constructive energies elsewhere.

[Waterluvian]

The SA Forums model does accomplish the goals of filtering out noise, but then you’re stuck with a stagnant community of “the right people.”

[bombcar]

Unironically slashdot's moderating and meta-moderating is the best long-term system I've seen.

Everything else seems to eventually cause new blood to dry up.

[jtchang]

I remember reading slashdot but what is their system? Is there a separate set of mods that moderate the moderators?

[throwaway173738]

You get points to mod other people and other people can meta-mod your posts.

[bombcar]

The key is that both were randomly assigned to users - you’d never know if you’d open a thread and be a moderator. If you posted in the thread you couldn’t moderate.

And about the same frequency you’d be assigned to metamoderate, basically being asked if a moderator’s “vote” was a good one or not (you didn’t have to fully agree you’d do the same, just that it wasn’t bad).

Someone who scored low in meta moderation would get less or no moderator chances.

[trinsic2]

I stopped reading slashdot along time ago.. I wonder why.

[Uvix]

Seems like restricting posts but not comments from a fresh account would thread that needle pretty well?

[johnnyanmac]

I'm surprised posts aren't restricted a bit more. Maybe that's just my old school "lurk moar" mentality, but I feel like I really need to understand the vibes of a community before I start to contribute posts to it.

[Barbing]

True

Mm, balancing against “long-time lurker, made an account just to post this”…

[AnimalMuppet]

Yeah, exactly. Thirteen years ago, I was a lurker. No account, because why would I make an account just to read? But when I wanted to say something badly enough, I made an account. (I think the first thing I did is post an Ask HN about functional programming, so "no posting for X time" might have turned me away.)

[SoftTalker]

I'd suggest: new accounts are read-only for at least a week. Then they can comment (rate limited at first, gradually relaxed) and vote, and then after some additional amount of time and/or karma they can submit a post. Maybe some of these mechanisms are already in place? Bots can probably game this too but drive-by bots maybe won't be patient enough.

[Barbing]

Immediate comment privileges are really important. Lots of examples, but to give a silly one, someone pastes their clipboard without realizing it includes their API key or their email. Good Samaritans should be able to say, "Hey, I just caught something."

And, as another commenter mentions, if someone shares your work, you should be able to comment on that thread without delay.

[VorpalWay]

This is the only reason I got myself a HN account: someone posted a link to a blog post of mine, and I happened to see the increased traffic on my VPS.

(And I stuck around after, a few posts are interesting enough. All the AI stuff isn't, and there is too much of that unfortunately.)

[3form]

You reminded me how infuriating it was not to be able to post comments on StackOverflow. Felt like getting those few upvotes required was taking forever, and all without ability to ask for clarification.

[Barbing]

Goodness that is rough, then they instantly own your posts where blanking edits are vandalism (obviously great for the internet, albeit at potential occasional individual cost).

[elaus]

It seems easy enough to circumvent: "We're launching our product in 2 weeks, so let the AI create and 'warm up' 20 new HN users so they're ready to shill".

It's really not a problem that can be solved easily :(

[mbreese]

If someone is going to put that much effort into to it, let them. I think the ideas here are to try to get some low hanging fruit to see if that works “good enough”. You’ll never block all AI generated accounts, but you may not have to and still have the desired effect.

But if someone wants to plant 20 new accounts, grow them out with karma votes, so that they can game the voting, there are probably other ways to detect that.

[intended]

The issue is that it’s not that much effort anymore.

We rely on friction for most of our social norms.

[sdenton4]

Any amount of friction reduces the amount of slop. What proportion of clankers are going to realize that they need to warm up the accounts two weeks in advance? Answer: a proportion that your never going to see with that barrier in place.

With a couple few layers of defense, you'll weed out almost all of the bad actors. Without strong monetary incentives for spamming, you also avoid most persistent actors.

[localuser13]

With enough layers you will also weed out almost all of the good actors. Normal people are busy and don't have time nor patience to jump over too many hoops to promote their cool new research, or to respond in a thread where someone linked it.

[heavyset_go]

Reddit has more friction to sign up or post while new or low karma.

The main subreddits will basically shadowban you until your account is aged and has more than X karma.

[intended]

You don’t have a choice.

We live with GenAI, and the human to bot ratio is now leaning in a different direction. The old norms are dead, because the old structures that held them up are gone.

This idea that theres “more hoops - losing participation” on this thread keeps assuming that the community is unaffected by the macro trends.

It’s weirdly positing that HN posts and users, are somehow immune/unaffected by those trends.

[basilikum]

Requiring accounts to be a certain age does not help and will only affect legitimate users. The slopsters will simply create accounts, wait a bit and start posting then.

Actually cross the will out. They are already doing this to avoid the green smell. This account replied to me today. 4 months old, but only started posting today. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=BelVisgarra

Oh damn, that's the one who posted the AskHN about the verified job portal on the frontpage today. Either this is some chilling still in build up, or it's an actual human being with severe LLM slop impersonation derangement syndrome.

[christofosho]

Yikes. That account is like the epitome of LLM posting. It's a shame, too, because it makes me feel less inclined to read discussion on this forum.

[basilikum]

Yeah, unfortunately there are bots here that are much better at hiding that and even do language mistakes on purpose.

It's still a small minority of comments, but it's definitely getting a problem and just the chance — even if it's small one — of talking to a bot, rather than a human causes inhibition. Finding out that one has been talking to a bot is finding out you've been scammed. You invest time and human emotions into something for another human to read, even if it's just a quick HN comment, just to find out that it was all for nothing. It sucks the humanity out of it and thereby out of oneself. You get tricked into spending your valuable limited human social energy on soulless machines with infinite capacity of generating worthless slop instead of on other humans.

[cozzyd]

didn't even bother not using an em dash...

[1718627440]

If most people are like my on that topic, then they use HN without an account, until they want to post or comment something, then they try to find out how to create an account. If they won't be able to post or comment then, then they will just not create or retain that account.

I was able to have discussions where one party has significantly unpopular opinions. Such discussions are unique to HN, please don't kill them.

[ThrowawayR2]

If that were to happen, I'd also suggest that comments from fresh accounts should also have URLs deleted or disabled.

[Barbing]

Even something like…

Example[.]com

But don’t worry, HN has been thoughtful about links from new accounts for months and months (can’t speak for longer, but maybe/probably). Effort could well be duplicative unless I’m unaware of some more granular detail.

[moralestapia]

Totally.

I don't think the solution is changing the dynamic but flagging, this site self-moderates quite well, aside from dang and tomhow's great work.

[vova_hn2]

This problem can be solved by an invite/vouch for system.

New account can be invited or vouched for by an old account with good karma. If an account that you vouched for starts spamming and/or slopposting, you lose your vouching for abilities for a period of time or forever.

[throwaway2037]

I didn't know anybody here before I joined. (I have been here for a few years, and I still don't know anybody here.) How would a person like me get invited or vouched?

[vova_hn2]

Ask you IRL friends or colleagues from your job "hey, do you happen to have an HN account?"

If the discussion is related to a public project, like in the examples in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47303604

...you can use existing communication channels (website, readme on github) to ask people for an invite to participate in it.

[throwaway2037]

I am pretty sure that none of my friends nor co-workers read HN. Whenever I have shared stuff, none of them have heard of HN.

[grapheneposter]

Yes that is exactly what I just did, some of us are just getting around to having time to post

[intended]

These changes aren’t being suggested in a vacuum.

It’s perhaps unintentional, but your framing makes it seem that this is a baseless whimsy.

At this point, it appears that we will be talking to bots more than humans.

It’s a brave new world, and not adapting to it will see the humans leave.

[dwedge]

Heh until this moment I thought green was a respected account somehow - like moderators on Reddit

[gmerc]

the death of the press should give you all the answers you need on this one.

[8cvor6j844qw_d6]

Honest question, what are the alternatives to HN?

Because if new account restrictions create enough friction, you lose legitimate users who periodically rotate accounts for privacy reasons.

At some point the annoyance tips toward just lurking, and a forum where only old accounts talk is a stagnant forum given enough time.

[alwa]

Lobste.rs comes to mind. High enough friction that, even as a seasoned participant here, I haven’t tried over there yet.

[rmast]

That looks interesting, but I feel like it’s likely to be close to impossible to join. Feels like it would be weird asking someone you know for an invite.

[esperent]

I've wanted to join lobste.rs for several years but don't see any way to do so. I think that might be a bit too far in the other direction.

[mastazi]

Same here, I don't know anyone who might send me an invite unfortunately. It's unlikely for this topic to come up organically in a conversation as in "hey by the way are you on lobste.rs" so my previous attempts were by sending messages in my company's notice board asking if someone is there. But in the last few years I have worked in smaller startups so the sample size is too small for this strategy to succeed.

[ajdecon]

FWIW, folks on lobste.rs are (mostly) friendly and willing to extend invites if you seem like a real person. My understanding is that the invite system is primarily in use to avoid drive-by spammers and the like.

Feel free to send me an email (findable via my HN profile) mentioning that you found it via this thread, and I’m happy to extend an invite.

[lagrange77]

Wow, i just noticed, that they block access from Brave Browser.

[shagie]

What's up with Lobste.rs blocking the Brave browser? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42353473 (93 comments, and linking to https://lobste.rs/s/iopw1d/what_s_up_with_lobste_rs_blocking... which is about that, though if you browse with Brave you might have trouble with it)

[kristopolous]

I think we've gone from the eternal September to the eternal December