HN Explorer

Tell HN: Sadly, my blog post's title was moderated

16 points by timdaub ↗ HN
I'm the author of a post that reached HN top #2 today with the spicy title "The AI Crowd is Mad."

A quick analysis that lead me to this title:

CTR is paramount to getting people to read your posts these days. Everybody linkbaits and so while I don't even want to dramatize my titles, this is just what everybody has to do to get a foothold in global competition. It isn't something I can change.

I had thought of a few titles before hand like: "AI is boiling our oceans," "AI is now in a Bubble" and finally "The AI Crowd is Mad."

I choose the later as it combines a mixture of touching people in their belief, behavior and belonging. "The crowd is mad," is a contrarian view to "the crowd is smart" and so those that train AI models implicitly assume it. It's a meaningful criticism that wants to tackle their presumptions. I'm really in doubt whether crowds are smart...

"The AI Crowd is Mad," is also a hint at the post's content in which I argue for the inflated expectations that investors have towards AI (and that it could be in a bubble).

I spent a significant time playing with titles to come up with "The AI Crowd is Mad" and I was proud of it. It is polemic to those that create AI, which is the audience I wanted to reach.

Sadly, though, and I don't know why, HN moderated the title into something very feeble that made the post drop off the front page (HN Guideline: "Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.").

The changed title is "LLM discourse needs more nuance," which makes me disappointed and cringe. By no means does this hit the level of offensiveness that I intended. I also wasn't able to edit the post back to its original title.

I'm writing this submission to tell y'all that I don't like this. Btw. I had to wait 5 hours now to make this second submission because I'm being rate limited.

I wanted my article's title to be spicy and people to controverse over it. I think there is value in provoking a discussion over this topic.

I understand that it now might have fared better with the more moderate title. But honestly, I doubt it (we cannot know). I feel a bit helpless because I want to have control over that title on HN.

That's all I want to say.

Edit: Btw. my rate limiting will probably not allow to reasonably participate in any ensuing discussion in this post...

29 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 85.8 ms ] thread
LeoSolaris
Might be a translation error. "Mad" in the US isn't considered the opposite of smart. It is the opposite of "peaceful" or "sane". You're original title implied that AI proponents are either insane or in a rage. (Or both)
timdaub
In the current discourse there is a debate whether the crowd is mad or wise/smart. E.g., you can see Thiel make the argument that crowds are mad, so I borrowed it from him as it is already an idea in people's heads.

"Mad" is nice, because it's "insane" or "rage," so it's really an accusation (which was my intention). But yes, I agree, it isn't the opposite of "smart."

WallyFunk
There's a weird unknown feature in HN that allows you to edit your title after submitting it, getting rid of HN's omission of words and punctuation. Some titles have an exclamation mark that gets stripped, and you can add it back in after submitting.
timdaub
Yeah, also "How" and "The" sometimes get automatically removed. But I don't recall seeing such an option after my submission was re-titled.
pigtailgirl
-- the title was clickbate - they changed it to not clickbate - it's in the HN guidelines - makes sense --
timdaub
Just exemplary, the #4 on HN right now is "A Cold War mystery: Why did Jimmy Carter save the space shuttle?" This is a fairly normal occurrence and nobody would dare to moderate it. But it is clearly super clickbait (of a nothing burger).

Edit:

#13 Virtual DOM is pure overhead (2018)

is a total dramatification and uses the exact same tactics as I, which is making react js devs re-consider their belief belonging behavior.

#19 Apple: $52,000 Mac Pro Is Now Worth $1k

motoxpro
#13 Virtual DOM is pure overhead (2018) in your language would be #13 Virtual DOM is mad (2018)
timdaub
#13 Virtual DOM is pure overhead (2018) is a dramatization. It says everyone using the virtual DOM is stupid for not optimizing their code and still using react. As someone with a lot of equity in react, it is shocking because it invokes a feeling of surprise: "Wow, I must be doing something wrong". The adjective "pure" is overhead. It adds drama, nothing else.
motoxpro
Their product doesn't use a virtual dom, i.e. to them it IS pure overhead. I agree with you that it is provocative, but it takes a position on a specific thing in the title, not just "Millions of people are stupid"

I don't want to see a bunch of titles that say "The react crowd is mad" which could have been the title

Edit: Reading your other posts here, it seems you can't/won't engage in the difference here.

timdaub
I didn't intend to insult the AI crowd as in "Millions of people are stupid." (as in e.g. "you, ML engineer are stupid"! I did NOT intend that). But in a stampede or a market mania people don't get hurt because of the individual's stupidity. They get hurt because of herd behavior, and it's tragic. But that's a group dynamic and isn't insulting people individually.
pigtailgirl
-- not sure you understand what clickbate is - "Clickbait is a text or a thumbnail link that is designed to attract attention and to entice users to follow that link and read, view, or listen to the linked piece of online content, being typically deceptive, sensationalized, or otherwise misleading." - all the titles you provide - tell what the article is going to be about to some degree or another - granted some better than others - your title tells me nothing useful at all - it's pure clickbate - it is not a good title --
timdaub
everything is clickbait if every headline was entirely milquetoast, nobody would know where to click anymore.

reuters.com: "Adani abandons $2.5 billion share sale in big blow to Indian tycoon"

Do you think it is necessary to mention "2.5 billion" "abandon" and "big blow" "tycoon". It is all clickbait everything. Without a good CTR, nothing gets read.

pigtailgirl
-- imo HN is trying to be better than that - you been here since 2015 - find it hard to believe you didnt pick up the ethos --
motoxpro
Agree. It doesn't make it not-clickbait just because your goal is to be "offensive". I will say, the article is just that, provocative without much substance.
timdaub
nothing to see here then

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wmf
I think ultimately HN isn't what you want/need and it's an intentional choice to not be part of the "modern" SEO/clickbait Web so it's not going to change. You're a guest in dang's house and no matter how bad you need to succeed you have to follow his rules. Yes, the rules are a tradeoff; sometimes good stuff gets lost. This is a normal part of the randomness of life.
timdaub
yeah sure, that's the same argument as "Twitter is a private company so stop being outraged by censorship."

I find it paternalistic that only _certain_ things get moderated in this way while other stuff is "too hard to do anything about it" (dang's words in a DM).

There is tons of bad behavior on HN that is invisible and slightly negative headlines are not a significant part. I had many posts upvoted by HN already. Hundreds of comments were generated from my work (which is btw for free).

I'm a meaningful contributor to this site - quite the opposite to the people calling me names for making an argument they don't like.

People say I haven't picked up on the HN spirit. To them I say, the first rule of PG is to not name call!

trynewideas
> By no means does this hit the level of offensiveness that I intended

lol. lmfao

matheist
Sounds to me like the process is working as intended. It's not by mistake.

You might disagree with the goals, but that's how things are around here. HN is about provoking curiosity, not offense, or controversy, or spice.

Sounds like your title is just not a good match for HN. That's not a reflection of the work you put into it, or whether your goals are worthwhile or anything like that. Just, not a good match.

timdaub
Then I would have appreciated if the mods would have given me a choice to edit my title. But they didn't. They made it feeble and ruined my 15 minutes of fame.
skiddo
Deliberate provocation via your self admitted “spicy” title is against the rules. Yet somehow you are a victim, throwing a tantrum on a public forum and polluting an otherwise coherent front page.

Quit insulting your readers intelligence with clickbait titles, or push your blogspam somewhere else please. Your sense of entitlement is astonishing.

timdaub
If you'd understand anything about publishing texts on the internet, you would not make this argument. A text is worth nothing without an optimized CTR preview. You can spend an entire year writing a text and making it beautiful to all the idealism that you're projecting into HN's content moderation. No single person would read it without an enticing title. Get on my level and then tell me again what I'm doing wrong.
skiddo
I am absolutely no expert in publishing. I have not claimed to be such! I am attempting to point out a blind spot you seem to be missing w/r/t a website acting within their moderation guidelines.

There is nothing stopping you from sharing your cruft (and bait titles) on other platforms. If you want to share it here, play by the rules or take your precious text elsewhere.

Your casual appeal to (your own) authority is juvenile. Not surprised this is your first 15 minutes of fame. Let us all hope it is the last.

qup
From another perspective, they gave you your 15 minutes of fame.

Posting it on your blog didn't get you any attention, right? It was posting it here.

HN linked to your site, and promoted it to their front page, and displayed it with a title you didn't give it. That's totally fine, and expected & encouraged by the larger community.

hw-guy
In fact, I did skip over the post with the new title; I don't know what LLM stands for and the title did not inspire the curiousity to find out. I would definitely have read "The AI Crowd is Mad."
d23
> By no means does this hit the level of offensiveness that I intended.

Mission accomplished then. Sounds like a good moderation decision.

Delk
For what it's worth, while I may fall into the trap of clickbait sometimes, I'd probably be just as likely to open a link to "LLM discourse needs more nuance" than I would to the original. If the original had been any more clickbaity, I'd have wanted to consciously avoid it instead.

(IMO your original title as it stands is just more of an expression of opinion. Not the most professionally clinical of them, but not overly clickbaity either. Eye-catching titles aren't a recent invention, and not always a bad thing either. The current attention economy has just taken it too far.)

timdaub
Yeah that's fine. But you have to consider that an article called "LLM discourse needs more nuance" will never make it in the /new sub page on HN. There is so much competition that uses the same tricks but potentially less apparent than what meets the eye. Please try writing something meaningful yourself and make it work. Headline is the only thing that defines the CTR on HN, so a submitter has to make it stand out, there is no other way.