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]
Warning: another fake troll account just created for this comment. The same one left a comment last night on a new account under Simon's comment as well but was flagged.
I'm the one that posted about it multiple times, including noticing the 45 second pattern the second time.
What's more concerning to me is despite all that and clear indications of it being a bot, dang seems to have ignored my comments and kept interacting with it two times:
If our own administrator of the website is getting duped, how are we going to be able to moderate effectively moving forward? Pointing it out multiple times ( y me and others) doesn't seem to have worked in this case.
Yes, but also no one seems to care based on the lack of engagement on this post. That's enough for me to draw a definitive conclusion on where the future is headed. Sad, but true.
Their comment got flagged, but looks like they made a new one today and is still active.
That account ('Soerensen') was created in 2024 and dormant until it made a bunch of detailed comments in the past 24-48 hrs. Some of them are multiple paragraph comments posted within 1 minute of each other.
One thing I've noticed is that they seem to be getting posted from old/inactive/never used accounts. Are they buying them? Creating a bunch and waiting months/years before posting?
Either way, both look like they're fooling people here. And getting better at staying under the radar until they slip up in little ways like this.
Some, maybe, but that's just another nice layer of plausible deniability.
The truth is that the internet is both(what's the word for 'both' when you have three(four?) things?) dead, an active cyber- and information- warzone and a dark forest.
I suppose it was fun while it lasted. At least we still have mostly real people in our local offline communities.
I feel like this is a bot account. Or at least, everything is AI generated. No posts at all since the account was created in 2024 and now suddenly in the past 24 hours there's dozens of detailed comments that all sort of follow the same pattern/vibe.
I use the built-in terminal "panel" inside VS Code/Cursor all the time. It's next to some other useful tab panels. Great for when you need to run commands for the current project but still want to chat in the sidebar or edit something else while it runs.
Sometimes I'll use Ghostty at the same time and switch between the two. Just depends on what I'm trying to do at the moment.
Nothing wrong with maintaining all the context you need in a single window instead of alt+tabbing to different apps, especially for those not engulfed by three 4K displays.
The number of people I've run into with a non-technical background that think ChatGPT is the definitive end-all for AI is very high. Most just don't know anything else even exists.
I do wonder how long they'll be able to use this to their advantage before something "else" comes along. Like how IE had the largest market share before Chrome and other alternatives started catching up.
Then again, some markets like YouTube still haven't had any real serious alternatives. Maybe ChatGPT will always be number one in the consumer eyes.
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
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