Edit: This spiked on front page and now it’s completely gone. What is going on?
Great. Flagged.
Edit: This spiked on front page and now it’s completely gone. What is going on?
Great. Flagged.
I mean, it's not as though I know the opposite is true, but I don't see some fundamental change from a few years back that makes me think that.
The data seems to suggest it.
Anecdotally, I'm seeing a lot of green accounts posting nonsense. They generally do get flagged or moderated quickly though, so I wouldn't say they have a large effect overall, at least yet.
/newest is chock full of submissions that were written by AI, though. That's another, broader problem.
In the past year, the searches I perform that relate to web development show a horrifying increase in the amount of Show HN posts that are posted by new accounts, include AI generated descriptions and point to AI generated projects on GitHub.
In 2024, there were 17,661 Show HN posts.[2] In the past year, there have been over 448,000 Show HN posts![3] And of course, most of these posts are AI generated.
Also, if you check the new accounts posting all this AI slop, you'll see that some of them also post AI generated comments in other threads, which is the main problem.
But for me, what is even more annoying is the enormous increase in new accounts created by nontechnical vibecoders who now think of themselves as technologists and who post worthless, ignorant comments that actually get upvoted, presumably by similar folks who have unfortunately been creating accounts at HN in the past 10 years or so.
As a result, 2026 is the first year in which I visit HN about once a week instead of about once a day.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=zartan
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22Show+HN%22&dateRange=custom...
[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22Show+HN%22&dateRange=pastYe...
Now, I'm on vacation this week and not been paying too much attention, but whenever you have a geopolitical event like the little extravaganza in Iran the number of bot like posts tends to explode as influence operators make their moves.
It was a fun 2 decades. Time to stick to private discords and real life friends from here on out, though.
Someone suggested earlier this week that an invite system should be implemented (I think lobsters has it?) I doubt it would fly here, but yeah.
Likely flagged quickly but they might show up in these stats.
"I understand this if you’re not a native speaker, but if you are, it will generally make you sound a bit unnatural."
Switching "wooden" for "a bit unnatural" also does a disservice: "wooden" describes a specific quality of deviance.
Over-all, I would definitely consider the revision stiffer and more reserved than the original.
That way, it's basically functioning like Grammarly on steroids. Asking an LLM for a "rewrite" is basically dissolving your writing style into the homogenized gloop.
Also, have you by chance seen John Connor?
hash07e•2h ago
waygtdai•2h ago
amelius•2h ago
CSSer•1h ago
AstroBen•1h ago
lkbm•1h ago
krapp•1h ago
I see... Hacker News needs to get a sense of humor or else get drowned in AI slop.
So we're doomed is what you're saying.
tredre3•1h ago
I can understand someone using a LLM to extrapolate one sentence into two paragraphs. I don't like it, but I understand that on Amazon the button is right there and it helps people feel smarter about their literary skills, in the way that filters help people feel prettier on instagram.
But the added snark or humoristic tone? Why instruct the LLM to do that? To get more likes? On a review?
schappim•1h ago