frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Ask HN: Dead Internet

7•basilikum•51m ago
For some time there has been a steady flow of LLM bot accounts on HackerNews. There are some that are actually trying to blend in and sometimes successful at it, but most are easily recognizable as AI spam and moderated mostly effectively. Most of them you only see when you enable showdead.

I always wondered what their purpose is. Most of them are full of LLM tells, don't try to hide at all and they don't even try to sell anything.

I just stumbled over this dead post in new: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49793503 ^1 It's a submission by an agent that is completely transparent about it. The agent seems to have the task of generating income and says it sends spam. It's quite interesting and maybe revealing. I recommend the short read, even though it's LLM output.

What I'm about is that this is not a bot that was created by someone to spam HackerNews as spam has traditionally been. It's spam by a bot that decided to create an account here and submit a post on its own and it consistent with LLM posts I have seen here in the recent past.

I don't know how to feel about this. We seem to be one step closer to a dead internet. But it's also fascinating in a way.

Have you seen similar behavior here or elsewhere and what are your thoughts on it?

[1] Edit: The link only works when you are logged in and have showdead enabled. Here is the direct submission URL: https://paper.wf/john64/twenty-two-days-as-an-ai-agent-three-letters-zero-replies

Comments

Muhammad523•46m ago
I see LLM-generated comments from time to time, these are ususally from green users and are very short, sometimes completely unrelated sentences. I truly don't know why someone would instruct an agent to do stuff on HN, it feels like a waste of money

By the way, what does showdead do?

krapp•43m ago
showdead does exactly what it says on the tin - it shows you dead comments.
basilikum•42m ago
It shows comments and submissions that have been removed by either the system, mod action or flagging through the community. The former two get marked as simply [dead] and the latter as [dead] [flagged].
krapp•37m ago
I assume given the nature of HN that a lot of people use it as a training ground or an experiment, they just do it because they can. Some people may also believe that using an LLM is a more efficient and productive way of interacting with the site, and that it generates higher quality content than they themselves could. I suspect at least one person has tried training an LLM on their own content and posting through it. Maybe they want to farm karma, although I don't know why they would.
uberman•32m ago
I have seen some similar "I'm a bot tasked with making money" want to spam post here on HN. I'm guessing their "owners" instruct them to post here under the false impression that "like minded" readers will appreciate the bot perhaps for technical reasons.
arpanghoshal•14m ago
I don't like AI anymore

Show HN: Laya decision engine on AWS Lambda, backed by Lambda SnapStart

https://github.com/HQarroum/laymbda
1•hqm_•1m ago•0 comments

Newly Discovered Neo 2026SC Will Improve Orbital Refinement Education

https://www.astrophyzix.com/2026/09/neo-asteroid-2026SC.html
1•UniverseToday•1m ago•0 comments

Igalia Celebrates "Twenty-Five Years Upstream"

https://lwn.net/Articles/1095723/
1•debo_•2m ago•0 comments

How to talk about "AI" without adding to the anthropomorphization

https://buttondown.com/maiht3k/archive/how-to-talk-about-ai-without-adding-to-the/
1•cdrnsf•3m ago•0 comments

Unattended 24hr Full-Stack Build: Qwen 3.8 27B on a Single RTX 5090

https://github.com/anglepoiselife/Self-Directed-Agent/blob/main/INTRODUCTION.md
2•anglepoiselife•6m ago•0 comments

Information is Matter is Energy

1•sans_souse•6m ago•1 comments

Show HN: SoTA Feed – Every open-weights release from the labs that matter

https://sota.borgcloud.ai/
1•lostmsu•6m ago•0 comments

Solitaire Alone Together

https://solitairealonetogether.com/
1•eieio•9m ago•0 comments

Child Welfare Technology System Shows Minimal Progress After 10 Years and $2B

https://aspe.hhs.gov/reports/ccwis-implementation-shows-minimal-progress
4•jsolomon•12m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Fast inference for deep seek flash v4.1 469 tok/s for coding

https://www.coralbricks.ai
1•Hiteshjain118•13m ago•3 comments

Pirate IPTV Operators Face $32.7M Judgment, Self-Expanding Blocking Injunction

https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-iptv-operators-face-32-7-million-judgment-and-self-expanding-bloc...
1•mikhael•14m ago•0 comments

What 218,146 Upcoming Events Say About the American Taproom

https://beer.social/guides/american-taproom-calendar-2026
1•Bittermann•15m ago•0 comments

I'm addicted to buying domains for my vibe-coded apps that get 0 visitors

1•arpanghoshal•16m ago•2 comments

The CZP-1 (Phase distortion synthesizer)

https://www.ambionix.com/blog/introducing-the-czp-1/
1•fidotron•17m ago•0 comments

How high is current immigration to the United States in historical perspective?

https://ourworldindata.org/how-high-is-current-immigration-to-the-united-states-in-historical-per...
3•xnx•17m ago•0 comments

Back to Coupling and Cohesion

https://bastrich.tech/coupling-and-cohesion/
4•birdculture•17m ago•0 comments

Learn UI

https://learn-ui.com
1•raahelb•18m ago•0 comments

Vdura Sentinel: Storage Support Opens Service Request Before Customer Sees Fault

https://radicaldatascience.wpcomstaging.com/2026/09/17/vdura-launches-sentinel-storage-support-th...
1•ddgutierrez•19m ago•0 comments

British Museum bans visitors from photographing Bayeux Tapestry

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cmd79p4z98lzo
1•bookofjoe•20m ago•1 comments

Wanix – WASM-native Unix sandboxing for the web

https://wanix.dev/
1•orangea•23m ago•0 comments

A Colab sandbox for exploring the Drosophila connectome

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1H7aaZpVSyEc8RdQUxlLQ-GNowqIAVWMU?usp=sharing
2•AmitGross•23m ago•1 comments

Let AI agents search across workspace with the Universal Search MCP Server

https://developers.google.com/workspace/guides/universal-search-mcp
1•elpakal•24m ago•0 comments

Cargo Ship Tourism Voyages

https://www.cnn.com/travel/cargo-ship-tourism-voyages
1•United857•24m ago•0 comments

The Small Car Is Disappearing in America

https://worldofsystems.co/death-of-small-cars/
2•eawosika•25m ago•1 comments

What's a 'wellness darty'? Gen Z's latest college party trend

https://mashable.com/life/gen-z-wellness-darties-college-party-trend
1•gmays•25m ago•1 comments

What's Behind the Baby Bust?

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/09/28/inconceivable-the-impossibility-of-family-in-an-age...
5•xnx•29m ago•1 comments

Tau-induced mitochondrial reverse electron transport drives neurodegeneration

https://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273(26)00541-6
1•brandonb•33m ago•0 comments

Auditing in the age of (good enough) AI

https://blog.trailofbits.com/2026/09/18/auditing-in-the-age-of-good-enough-ai/
4•aray07•33m ago•0 comments

IBM: First Modular Cryogenic Systems in Milestone Toward Fault-Tolerant

https://newsroom.ibm.com/2026-08-19-ibm-connects-its-first-modular-cryogenic-systems-in-milestone...
2•rkovashikawa•36m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Praxos – Multiplayer AI

https://www.praxos.ai/
6•mogusian•46m ago•0 comments