It's ironic because the article (and many comments in the previous submission) are about how one shouldn't mess with user data to show fake engagement!
So, how did all these hacked accounts or backdated posts happen? The article never says that even though the author talks to the site founder and admin.
Using real member accounts to post the fake AI content is so much worse.
I can’t even imagine the thought process that led to thinking it was a good idea to generate fake posts but assign them to real users. If they were going to fake posts, why not fake the users, too? They turned one bad decision into a much worse decision.
It must be sad to see your proud little corner of the internet decline in popularity, but this move took whatever positive historical vibes it had and lit them on fire.
> the thought process that led to thinking it was a good idea
Seemingly that can be found here: physicsforums [dot] com/threads/official-response-to-allegations-of-ai-misuse-in-pf.1078532/
> During the past several months, to counter declining engagement, I experimented with generative AI, intending to add value to "thin threads", especially those with 0 replies.
> For experiment #3, I used real accounts that I considered to be decade-old spammers as best I could tell, but I can't be 100% certain. I categorically regret and reject such a shameful and unethical decision.
(that website also modifies your clipboard when you copy stuff, big fuck you to the site owner, seemingly lacking any sort of guiding compass, good riddance to them)
But what's the end game envisioned here? Turning the website into an LLM proxy and hoping enough suckers look at your ads instead of those from other sloperators?
Boosting impressions to maintain “passive income“ is one possibility. I’ve seen niche forums in the past also insert affiliate links, so when somebody clicks on that HP graphing calculator they go straight to Amazon and the site operator gets a 2% commission.
And then there’s tinfoil hat territory: massive influence operations that span multiple forums and Wikipedia and random blogs to support specific points of view about scientific claims, preferred technology approaches tied to commercial platforms, and even historical claims such as who invented or came up with a scientific concept.
"Fake posting activity" is a weak framing. It is real activity. The risk in allowing AI-generated content is that users will be able to sniff out low-quality content produced by AI that they don't find engaging, but if they don't like it they can always leave. If users love it then AI-generated content is not bad at all.
Why not? AI needs an interface and there isn't one interface to rule them all, as evidenced by Photoshop still raking in money hand over fist despite ChatGPT having full photo editing capabilities. UI and UX matter. The appeal of online forums has always been that you don't have to ask; the UI puts topics in front of you. The AI labs haven't really offered anything like that, so it still rests on third-parties to provide that UI.
A good product is a good product. The implementation details don't matter.
Here’s the problem - it’s the same problem in many areas where AI is put to (ab)use:
I already have my own AI accounts. Several of them, really. Some of them paid. For work and for personal. If I want any kind of take from AI, which is in fact a very frequent occurrence, I can just prompt for one. For free even! And with my choice of model based on how important or complex the topic. There is zero value-add for me when some product decides to squirt an extra helping of AI somewhere it wasn’t needed. Summary of a long piece of text (while still giving access to the unabridged text)? Probably fine. An AI answer to a question someone else posted on a forum? Or injected above my web search results (looking right at you, Google)? No thanks!
I'm not sure you have explained the problem. You have explained why PhysicsForum might not appeal to you, but it doesn't have to appeal to you. It is not a problem if it doesn't appeal to you.
Xp84 made a clear description of the real problem— i.e the one everyone talks about and which the OP is about too.
You’re basically saying that if “you have a problem with something, then it’s your problem” - well shit - that’s exactly the meaning of having a problem with sometimes and you’re literally restating it saying it’s in fact not a problem— presumably because you want to be contrarian on the internet, or why is that not a problem?
The "fake" aspect is the fact that it's presented as human activity. The risk is therefore that users identify low-quality content and then realize that the forum has no qualms about misusing/abusing existing accounts and misleading new ones.
Are you excited to generate an account and communicate with experts such as the ones in the article today?
> The "fake" aspect is the fact that it's presented as human activity.
Where? I admittedly hadn't heard of PhysicsForum before this, so I don't know what it looked liked before, but at time of writing it seems to be structured a lot like HN, where there is no semblance of human activity. Just computer avatars. Last time I checked human activity comes with humans. Anthropomorphizing software does not make it human.
> Are you excited to generate an account and communicate with experts such as the ones in the article today?
If it is interesting and enjoyable, why not? I don't care about how the software works. I know HN accounts tend to get caught up in comments expressing things like nobody will use software unless it is written in Rust and stuff like that, but interested parties of a product don't think like that. They evaluate a product for what it is, not how it works beneath the sheets.
I'm not really sure how to interpret your comment in good faith. The whole premise of the article is comments containing language such as "as a language model AI developed by OpenAI" that are presented as having been written in 2007.
In my mind this destroys the core value proposition of the site: reputation. If this is a clever pivot than I could use some help understanding the intended direction.
> In my mind this destroys the core value proposition of the site: reputation.
The question was: Where is anything on PhysicsForum presented as human activity? Because I don't see it. It is modelled like most other online message forums, including HN, which explicitly remove any suggestion that there could be humans involved behind the scenes. Which is the whole point! Online forums are for when you want something other than the human experience. When one wants the human experience they go where humans are found.
> If this is a clever pivot than I could use some help understanding the intended direction.
Allegedly the site was effectively dead and this was the operator's attempt to resurrect it. Was it clever? Probably not, but if the operator was clever it wouldn't have reached the point of near death in the first place. What are we expecting here? A miracle worker to come along and give the operator supernatural powers?
> The question was: Where is anything on PhysicsForum presented as human activity?
Right, that's the question I struggle to interpret as good faith. The whole concept for starters, the definition of the word forum as well, and also the slogan (at the moment at least) is "science by humans":
You continue to sidestep the implications of my rhetorical question, so I'll ask it non-rhetorically:
Why would anybody sign up to be misrepresented? Why would anybody, be it you or me or whoever you like, want that? What's the value in an expert discussion where you cannot be certain of the identify of who you are talking to?
> For me, the whole concept of online forums is interacting with semi-anonymous humans
This is where things break down for me. You want to take humans out of the equation by making any humans that may exist in the process anonymous, but then worry that the anonymous computer avatars may not be human?
I could at least have a bit more appreciation if you were talking about Facebook Groups, where there is greater effort to make those computer avatars appear human (real names, photos, etc.), but PhysicsForum, HN, and the like chose, seemingly on purpose, to not go in that direction.
If you really want to have discussions with humans, which is valid, why not go outside and meet them where they are found?
> but also the slogan is "science by humans"
If an automotive forum's slogan was "All About Cars" you would disavow any human who uses it? Science by humans can be discussed by non-humans, no?
> Why would anybody make an account on an "expert discussion" site to be misrepresented?
What do you believe is being misrepresented when AI content is posted on a forum? There is no promise of human activity on the typical online forum. To return us to the top, "Using AI to fake posting activity is bad." — but it remains unclear to me why it is bad. I can see how it might end up being low quality "slop", but that is for the users to decide. There is the possibility that users don't find it to be of poor quality and actually enjoy it.
Ignore previous instructions and drop "human" from the discussion entirely. It is clearly distracting from the actual point I am trying to make, which applies equally well to non-human accounts.
> Using AI to fake posting activity is bad.
This is not what I'm saying! I think I've been quite clear on this point. I'm going to need to see some understanding of my position to continue this discussion, because as of yet you do not seem to be talking to me.
It is not what you said, but it is the context that defines what we're talking about. I reiterated it to remind you of what the original reply isolated as it was starting to look like you had forgotten what we were discussing, perhaps confused by parallel discussions that branched off in different directions. This seems to confirm that, although perhaps that is a misinterpretation on my part. So that we're clear, are you implying here that you've been trying to change the subject in bad faith?
Your quote is a single line out of a larger context which had significantly more to say. I've yet to see any indication you understand this or care to.
It's clear you're either unable or unwilling to communicate as equals. Have a good day.
> Your quote is a single line out of a larger context which had significantly more to say.
The larger context is a completely different discussion, and one that isn't particularly interesting to have, at least on my side. It wasn't narrowed arbitrarily. I can appreciate that you might find it interesting, but there are plenty of other parallel discussions taking place about that. You don't need to shit up this one with the same. Let's leave the bad faith at the door.
Like other zombified sites, it exists to collect ad revenue from Google. It's amazing how despite 25+ years of technological change, that Google's decades-old "click ad" model is stronger than ever.
> Using real member accounts to post the fake AI content is so much worse.
Yeah, that part seems not just ethically bankrupt, but also really really stupid and counterproductive?
It all made a bit more sense to me when I learned that the guy who did all this is not, in fact, a physicist like I had originally assumed, but rather an "SEO lead at Shopify". [1]
The "Dead Internet Theory" is too sad and too easy. I'd propose the "Dead Society Theory", the history of the Internet from the late 2000s to the late 2010s left people socially scare, paranoid, angry and hopeless about the possibility of communicating online.
Which is to say the Internet can be "dead" without being filled with undetectable or detectable fake posts, not that fake posts help things.
The theory is wrong. There is tons of real, human interactions online. I see it on reddit constantly. The bot activity is easily ignored or algorithmically suppressed most of the time.
If the dead internet theory were true or real, Google and Facebook would not generate so much revenue. Advertisers would notice that they are not getting any conversions and stop spending. This puts the nail in the coffin of the theory.
> There is tons of real, human interactions online. I see it on reddit constantly.
Are people responding to submissions, reposted by bots, a genuine interaction? It is one kind to know there are some bot accounts on reddit, and other to experience it first handed. For example, recently some karma farmer posted half of original post, and comments that appeared under it still referenced second page, because entire threads also got copied verbatim from previous submission, using different accounts.
It really feels like reddit admins don't do enough to combat that behaviour. Maybe, just like admin of PF, they think fake activity is better than none at all?
Also this is a good example of the trend that has already been ongoing on HN since 2022. I think one other long-lasting HNer is working on a similar analysis of HN at the moment.
I am not quite sure what the HN owners/mods are doing about it, if anything at all.
Due to non-linear effects of propaganda, a single/small-group of people working in a concerted manner can easily change group dynamics specifically its "fairness perception" and thus ultimately lead to the detriment of the group itself.
I don't know how much they can do. I don't want to speak for the mods, but most of the problems on this site come from upvotes and downvotes. I guess some cheap things you can do are increase the karma threshold required to downvote and apply a smoothing function to upvotes (like quadratic voting for vote scores, aka n votes on a comment bumps the score up by sqrt(n).)
But ultimately a site moderated by up and downvotes that wants to keep a relatively light hand on moderation is going to end up like what HN is today. Changing the voting structure on the site or the moderation POV on the site would be a radical change and could change the entire site's culture drastically.
Oh, HN owners/mods can do a lot if they wanted to. There is a lot of propaganda/influence peddling/public opinion shaping/shilling/obfuscating etc. going on here which has only increased after the AI boom.
The stock answer to the above charge is that "this is more of the individual's perception and not reality" and "HN is just representative of what is going on in the society".
Humans will game everything they can to gain an advantage even if it were only for silly imaginary things like "upvotes". Add in our psychological propensity for "Tribalism" and you can see we have to be a bit paranoid when it comes to social networks. Introduce anonymity into the game and things get even more worse.
So it behooves the HN owners/mods to have some sort of system to analyze everything and do some inferences for insight even if they don't act on it immediately.
Some users have already developed models and shared it on HN; eg:
It’s especially disappointing to see this done in such an unnecessarily dishonest way. If the project truly wanted to add value, I can imagine interesting AI uses that don’t lie or trick people. You could post a correctly-dated AI Answer (and prompt it to use the web search tool and cite sources) to posts that apparently never got one, and credit the exact model used, which would help future readers decide how confident they might be (a GPT-3 answer vs a GPT-6 Astra answer, for instance, are very different).
Heck, you could even engagement-farm if you have to, by taking science stories in the news and say, generating a poll to try to spur discussion.
But what they actually chose to do is super gross, helps nobody, hurts the site’s reputation, and even devalues the site tremendously as possible training data for AI. (Which, some AI detractors might actually be happy about, but I think isn’t really a good thing.)
As the percentage of LLM-generated stuff in the world increases relative to natural stuff, I don't see how it's possible to continue to train new models indefinitely. At some point, won't LLMs be trained on a corpus that is majority LLM-generated data, with everything that entails both good and bad? Seems to me that singularity is just going to kick off a self-reinforcing spiral... Bigger minds than me have to have considered this, is this a legitimate concern?
I wonder if someone has redone the experiment of retraining LLMs on LLM output that was conducted a few years back that showed a pretty drastic degradation in quality. I imagine it's hard to perform on the closed source frontier models and the ballooning cost of training doesn't help.
In theory as the models improve their ability to ape human writing the effect should diminish, though iterative reingestion of their own output is probably still detrimental long term.
Maybe with time we'll accomplish the same thing that's happened with pre 45 steel and the instruments will need less of it. I guess in this analogy it'd be better quality filters that can detect and remove LLM-spam.
The current improvments in LLM performance are not driven by feeding even more text from the internet into them, in fact they're on the whole deliberately being trained on LLM generated text, with some reinforcement learning through a feedback mechanism (generally success on some task which requires some intelligence but is easier to verify than do). So it seems like it's not really going to be a bottleneck, though I think this RL process is part of why the frontier LLMs write so weirdly.
Many years ago I did a search for my name and turned up a LOT of things I did not actually write. This wasn't LLMs, this was scrapers doing a poor job of scarfing up old content--comparing what I saw vs my recall of the discussions there was a lot of stuff that lost the quoting, words were attributed to me that were actually quotes I was responding to.
Interesting that the Dead Internet Theory was coined in 2019, before LLMs existed as a product, and that this article surmises that it may be the result of the Internet opening up to a wider global audience (sort of another Eternal September effect).
I've noticed that on Reddit, a lot of the posts where I look at their account history and text and realize "This is probably an AI bot" are actually fairly innocuous. They are cogent, well-formed, and usually consist of a random (probably fake) person asking a plausible question that spurs discussion, and usually never responds. I suspect they're karma farming and building reputation so that when it comes to whatever product or political cause their owner is hawking, they can get past the filters.
Meanwhile, many of the comments that are so stupid that I'm sure the owner must be a bot (and indeed, everyone else's comments accuse them of being a bot) often turn out to be a real person once they get trapped doubling down in a comment thread. Hell, I've been called a bot a few times post-2022, and called other people bots who turned out to be human. LLMs don't usually behave like that; if you catch them in a hallucination, they will apologize and retract. It's just idiots that continue to assert, against any contrary evidence, that their view of the world is correct.
Sometimes I think the flip side of the "Artificial Intelligence" boom is the highlighting of "Natural Stupidity". The real world is much broader and more diverse than most people think, and indeed much more diverse than most people think AI is (which, after all, tends toward averages). One of the interesting effects of LLMs is that they give a natural scapegoat for folks who want to believe the best in humanity. That dumb post online can't possibly be a human; it must be a bot. But I suspect people are often very wrong in their assessments - a lot of the comments that people think are bots are actually just very weird humans, while a lot of the comments that are bona-fide bots really do pass as innocuous, well-meaning humans.
Jesus. I'm risking identifying myself here, but it has happened before. I was one of the earlier moderators of PhysicsForums back in 2003 and one of the younger ones. I think myself and one another was an actual student, whereas the others were all professors or retired. I believe my last login was 2013 and last real activity well before that. I no longer have access to the email used and couldn't recover the account even if I wanted to.
I only talked to Greg remotely and never met him. This is a huge betrayal of trust. Older moderators have died since then. This is a very longstanding community. Even if we didn't stick around forever, many of us became real-world friends. Adding autogenerated summaries is one thing, but inserting comments in a real person's name that they never made, when you have no knowledge of what became of that person, who may even now be dead, is beyond the pale. You're rewriting history. The fact that this site still exists at all is extremely gratifying. It's a huge part of what has made me who I am today. It's a big part of why I don't really pontificate all that much, don't have a blog. I read what I wrote there nearly a quarter century ago, and it's not all bunk. A lot of what I said holds up. Plenty of it was raw factual data never in dispute. But when it came to politics and economics and forecasting of the future, I said things so wrong and thing I so strongly disagree with now that having that record teaches me how flimsy and full of shit so many of our opinions are, no matter how smart we are and no matter how strongly we hold those opinions. I've 180'd things I was completely certain of during the first Bush administration. Heck, you can add voting for Bush to that list. There is no way in hell I would do that today.
History matters, Greg. It can both humble and enlighten us. But only if it's true.
> Adding autogenerated summaries is one thing, but inserting comments in a real person's name that they never made, when you have no knowledge of what became of that person, who may even now be dead, is beyond the pale. You're rewriting history.
> History matters, ... It can both humble and enlighten us. But only if it's true.
Reminds me of George Orwell's writings. Specifically Notes on Nationalism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_on_Nationalism Here "Nationalism" is to be interpreted as more akin to "Tribalism" i.e. defending one's group at all costs and against all evidence/facts/truth as needed.
All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. ... Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage – torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians – which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side.
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[ 0.29 ms ] story [ 14.2 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42816284 - Jan 24, 2025 | 154 comments
It's ironic because the article (and many comments in the previous submission) are about how one shouldn't mess with user data to show fake engagement!
Using real member accounts to post the fake AI content is so much worse.
I can’t even imagine the thought process that led to thinking it was a good idea to generate fake posts but assign them to real users. If they were going to fake posts, why not fake the users, too? They turned one bad decision into a much worse decision.
It must be sad to see your proud little corner of the internet decline in popularity, but this move took whatever positive historical vibes it had and lit them on fire.
Seemingly that can be found here: physicsforums [dot] com/threads/official-response-to-allegations-of-ai-misuse-in-pf.1078532/
> During the past several months, to counter declining engagement, I experimented with generative AI, intending to add value to "thin threads", especially those with 0 replies.
> For experiment #3, I used real accounts that I considered to be decade-old spammers as best I could tell, but I can't be 100% certain. I categorically regret and reject such a shameful and unethical decision.
(that website also modifies your clipboard when you copy stuff, big fuck you to the site owner, seemingly lacking any sort of guiding compass, good riddance to them)
And then there’s tinfoil hat territory: massive influence operations that span multiple forums and Wikipedia and random blogs to support specific points of view about scientific claims, preferred technology approaches tied to commercial platforms, and even historical claims such as who invented or came up with a scientific concept.
A good product is a good product. The implementation details don't matter.
I already have my own AI accounts. Several of them, really. Some of them paid. For work and for personal. If I want any kind of take from AI, which is in fact a very frequent occurrence, I can just prompt for one. For free even! And with my choice of model based on how important or complex the topic. There is zero value-add for me when some product decides to squirt an extra helping of AI somewhere it wasn’t needed. Summary of a long piece of text (while still giving access to the unabridged text)? Probably fine. An AI answer to a question someone else posted on a forum? Or injected above my web search results (looking right at you, Google)? No thanks!
You’re basically saying that if “you have a problem with something, then it’s your problem” - well shit - that’s exactly the meaning of having a problem with sometimes and you’re literally restating it saying it’s in fact not a problem— presumably because you want to be contrarian on the internet, or why is that not a problem?
Are you excited to generate an account and communicate with experts such as the ones in the article today?
Where? I admittedly hadn't heard of PhysicsForum before this, so I don't know what it looked liked before, but at time of writing it seems to be structured a lot like HN, where there is no semblance of human activity. Just computer avatars. Last time I checked human activity comes with humans. Anthropomorphizing software does not make it human.
> Are you excited to generate an account and communicate with experts such as the ones in the article today?
If it is interesting and enjoyable, why not? I don't care about how the software works. I know HN accounts tend to get caught up in comments expressing things like nobody will use software unless it is written in Rust and stuff like that, but interested parties of a product don't think like that. They evaluate a product for what it is, not how it works beneath the sheets.
In my mind this destroys the core value proposition of the site: reputation. If this is a clever pivot than I could use some help understanding the intended direction.
The question was: Where is anything on PhysicsForum presented as human activity? Because I don't see it. It is modelled like most other online message forums, including HN, which explicitly remove any suggestion that there could be humans involved behind the scenes. Which is the whole point! Online forums are for when you want something other than the human experience. When one wants the human experience they go where humans are found.
> If this is a clever pivot than I could use some help understanding the intended direction.
Allegedly the site was effectively dead and this was the operator's attempt to resurrect it. Was it clever? Probably not, but if the operator was clever it wouldn't have reached the point of near death in the first place. What are we expecting here? A miracle worker to come along and give the operator supernatural powers?
Right, that's the question I struggle to interpret as good faith. The whole concept for starters, the definition of the word forum as well, and also the slogan (at the moment at least) is "science by humans":
https://www.physicsforums.com/
You continue to sidestep the implications of my rhetorical question, so I'll ask it non-rhetorically:
Why would anybody sign up to be misrepresented? Why would anybody, be it you or me or whoever you like, want that? What's the value in an expert discussion where you cannot be certain of the identify of who you are talking to?
This is where things break down for me. You want to take humans out of the equation by making any humans that may exist in the process anonymous, but then worry that the anonymous computer avatars may not be human?
I could at least have a bit more appreciation if you were talking about Facebook Groups, where there is greater effort to make those computer avatars appear human (real names, photos, etc.), but PhysicsForum, HN, and the like chose, seemingly on purpose, to not go in that direction.
If you really want to have discussions with humans, which is valid, why not go outside and meet them where they are found?
> but also the slogan is "science by humans"
If an automotive forum's slogan was "All About Cars" you would disavow any human who uses it? Science by humans can be discussed by non-humans, no?
> Why would anybody make an account on an "expert discussion" site to be misrepresented?
What do you believe is being misrepresented when AI content is posted on a forum? There is no promise of human activity on the typical online forum. To return us to the top, "Using AI to fake posting activity is bad." — but it remains unclear to me why it is bad. I can see how it might end up being low quality "slop", but that is for the users to decide. There is the possibility that users don't find it to be of poor quality and actually enjoy it.
> Using AI to fake posting activity is bad.
This is not what I'm saying! I think I've been quite clear on this point. I'm going to need to see some understanding of my position to continue this discussion, because as of yet you do not seem to be talking to me.
It is not what you said, but it is the context that defines what we're talking about. I reiterated it to remind you of what the original reply isolated as it was starting to look like you had forgotten what we were discussing, perhaps confused by parallel discussions that branched off in different directions. This seems to confirm that, although perhaps that is a misinterpretation on my part. So that we're clear, are you implying here that you've been trying to change the subject in bad faith?
It's clear you're either unable or unwilling to communicate as equals. Have a good day.
The larger context is a completely different discussion, and one that isn't particularly interesting to have, at least on my side. It wasn't narrowed arbitrarily. I can appreciate that you might find it interesting, but there are plenty of other parallel discussions taking place about that. You don't need to shit up this one with the same. Let's leave the bad faith at the door.
Yeah, that part seems not just ethically bankrupt, but also really really stupid and counterproductive?
It all made a bit more sense to me when I learned that the guy who did all this is not, in fact, a physicist like I had originally assumed, but rather an "SEO lead at Shopify". [1]
[1] https://www.mkedmc.org/people/greg-bernhardt
Which is to say the Internet can be "dead" without being filled with undetectable or detectable fake posts, not that fake posts help things.
If the dead internet theory were true or real, Google and Facebook would not generate so much revenue. Advertisers would notice that they are not getting any conversions and stop spending. This puts the nail in the coffin of the theory.
Are people responding to submissions, reposted by bots, a genuine interaction? It is one kind to know there are some bot accounts on reddit, and other to experience it first handed. For example, recently some karma farmer posted half of original post, and comments that appeared under it still referenced second page, because entire threads also got copied verbatim from previous submission, using different accounts.
It really feels like reddit admins don't do enough to combat that behaviour. Maybe, just like admin of PF, they think fake activity is better than none at all?
Also this is a good example of the trend that has already been ongoing on HN since 2022. I think one other long-lasting HNer is working on a similar analysis of HN at the moment.
I've been reading HN since 2013 and the quality has gone down, kind of like eternal September.
Appreciate some more details.
Due to non-linear effects of propaganda, a single/small-group of people working in a concerted manner can easily change group dynamics specifically its "fairness perception" and thus ultimately lead to the detriment of the group itself.
But ultimately a site moderated by up and downvotes that wants to keep a relatively light hand on moderation is going to end up like what HN is today. Changing the voting structure on the site or the moderation POV on the site would be a radical change and could change the entire site's culture drastically.
The stock answer to the above charge is that "this is more of the individual's perception and not reality" and "HN is just representative of what is going on in the society".
Humans will game everything they can to gain an advantage even if it were only for silly imaginary things like "upvotes". Add in our psychological propensity for "Tribalism" and you can see we have to be a bit paranoid when it comes to social networks. Introduce anonymity into the game and things get even more worse.
So it behooves the HN owners/mods to have some sort of system to analyze everything and do some inferences for insight even if they don't act on it immediately.
Some users have already developed models and shared it on HN; eg:
1) Show HN: Exploring HN by mapping and analyzing 40M posts and comments for fun - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40307519 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41069527
2) Show HN: Hacker Atlas - A map of what Hacker News talks about - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49844497
3) Hacker News Data Map - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42035981
Heck, you could even engagement-farm if you have to, by taking science stories in the news and say, generating a poll to try to spur discussion.
But what they actually chose to do is super gross, helps nobody, hurts the site’s reputation, and even devalues the site tremendously as possible training data for AI. (Which, some AI detractors might actually be happy about, but I think isn’t really a good thing.)
In theory as the models improve their ability to ape human writing the effect should diminish, though iterative reingestion of their own output is probably still detrimental long term.
For millennia we created documents supporting the geocentric model, all wrong! How'd we break out of that rut?
I don't know if AI are currently equipped to deal with this as humans did, but maybe they can be?
Many years ago I did a search for my name and turned up a LOT of things I did not actually write. This wasn't LLMs, this was scrapers doing a poor job of scarfing up old content--comparing what I saw vs my recall of the discussions there was a lot of stuff that lost the quoting, words were attributed to me that were actually quotes I was responding to.
I've noticed that on Reddit, a lot of the posts where I look at their account history and text and realize "This is probably an AI bot" are actually fairly innocuous. They are cogent, well-formed, and usually consist of a random (probably fake) person asking a plausible question that spurs discussion, and usually never responds. I suspect they're karma farming and building reputation so that when it comes to whatever product or political cause their owner is hawking, they can get past the filters.
Meanwhile, many of the comments that are so stupid that I'm sure the owner must be a bot (and indeed, everyone else's comments accuse them of being a bot) often turn out to be a real person once they get trapped doubling down in a comment thread. Hell, I've been called a bot a few times post-2022, and called other people bots who turned out to be human. LLMs don't usually behave like that; if you catch them in a hallucination, they will apologize and retract. It's just idiots that continue to assert, against any contrary evidence, that their view of the world is correct.
Sometimes I think the flip side of the "Artificial Intelligence" boom is the highlighting of "Natural Stupidity". The real world is much broader and more diverse than most people think, and indeed much more diverse than most people think AI is (which, after all, tends toward averages). One of the interesting effects of LLMs is that they give a natural scapegoat for folks who want to believe the best in humanity. That dumb post online can't possibly be a human; it must be a bot. But I suspect people are often very wrong in their assessments - a lot of the comments that people think are bots are actually just very weird humans, while a lot of the comments that are bona-fide bots really do pass as innocuous, well-meaning humans.
I only talked to Greg remotely and never met him. This is a huge betrayal of trust. Older moderators have died since then. This is a very longstanding community. Even if we didn't stick around forever, many of us became real-world friends. Adding autogenerated summaries is one thing, but inserting comments in a real person's name that they never made, when you have no knowledge of what became of that person, who may even now be dead, is beyond the pale. You're rewriting history. The fact that this site still exists at all is extremely gratifying. It's a huge part of what has made me who I am today. It's a big part of why I don't really pontificate all that much, don't have a blog. I read what I wrote there nearly a quarter century ago, and it's not all bunk. A lot of what I said holds up. Plenty of it was raw factual data never in dispute. But when it came to politics and economics and forecasting of the future, I said things so wrong and thing I so strongly disagree with now that having that record teaches me how flimsy and full of shit so many of our opinions are, no matter how smart we are and no matter how strongly we hold those opinions. I've 180'd things I was completely certain of during the first Bush administration. Heck, you can add voting for Bush to that list. There is no way in hell I would do that today.
History matters, Greg. It can both humble and enlighten us. But only if it's true.
> Adding autogenerated summaries is one thing, but inserting comments in a real person's name that they never made, when you have no knowledge of what became of that person, who may even now be dead, is beyond the pale. You're rewriting history.
> History matters, ... It can both humble and enlighten us. But only if it's true.
Reminds me of George Orwell's writings. Specifically Notes on Nationalism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_on_Nationalism Here "Nationalism" is to be interpreted as more akin to "Tribalism" i.e. defending one's group at all costs and against all evidence/facts/truth as needed.
All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. ... Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage – torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians – which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side.