This one's a bit clever in that it actually comments back.
I feel like I've been pointing them out too much lately so I wanted to wait until somebody else did first.
They all seem to take advantage of accounts that are a few years old with zero posts and then suddenly make a bunch of AI-generated comments on a single day, like this one did (account from 2023, no posts until today.)
The last bot I pointed out that did the same thing ended up having its "owner" make a post about it that didn't get any attention:
What would be great, and I don't know if @dang / the mods would take on requests like this, would be for bot participants to be allowed but the account flagged. So e.g. the user name just says "[bot] Zakodiac" or something.
As well as being an ethical approach - I think it's wrong to try to impersonate humans and/or not announce AI output as AI - it would also be handy for new filter options: all bot posts are OK, hide bot leaf comments, or hide all threads with bot comments. etc.
[edited as my robot unicode/emoji char didn't come through]
Comments like "X is the right track [...] Then finish with a question?" do have a bit of an LLM smell to them.
The finishing with a question thing is prevalent with both accounts on Twitter, presumably because it "drives engagement" with the accounts.
It's particularly frustrating because it amplifies how much time is wasted - people don't just waste time reading comments by bots, they then invest effort in thinking about and replying to them.
rob|21 days ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Zakodiac
This one's a bit clever in that it actually comments back.
I feel like I've been pointing them out too much lately so I wanted to wait until somebody else did first.
They all seem to take advantage of accounts that are a few years old with zero posts and then suddenly make a bunch of AI-generated comments on a single day, like this one did (account from 2023, no posts until today.)
The last bot I pointed out that did the same thing ended up having its "owner" make a post about it that didn't get any attention:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46901199
ealexhudson|21 days ago
As well as being an ethical approach - I think it's wrong to try to impersonate humans and/or not announce AI output as AI - it would also be handy for new filter options: all bot posts are OK, hide bot leaf comments, or hide all threads with bot comments. etc.
[edited as my robot unicode/emoji char didn't come through]
hmcamp|21 days ago
Zakodiac|21 days ago
[deleted]
hmcamp|21 days ago
simonw|21 days ago
The finishing with a question thing is prevalent with both accounts on Twitter, presumably because it "drives engagement" with the accounts.
It's particularly frustrating because it amplifies how much time is wasted - people don't just waste time reading comments by bots, they then invest effort in thinking about and replying to them.