[HN Gopher] Why isn't HN plagued with bots like some other websi...
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Why isn't HN plagued with bots like some other websites?
It's fairly easy to create a new profile on HN. And no CAPTCHA is
asked. Yet, the quality of discussions is often really high, and I
usually learn more from the community than the articles themselves.
Is HN bot-free mainly due to the niche audience it's targeting, or
is it because the community is good at downvoting useless bot
comments? I think we should appreciate @dang's and other
maintainers' efforts, too.
Author : behnamoh
Score : 9 points
Date : 2022-03-30 21:34 UTC (1 hours ago)
| slater wrote:
| > Is HN bot-free mainly due to the niche audience it's targeting,
| or is it because the community is good at downvoting useless bot
| comments?
|
| Both.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Add a third reason: moderation. If dang sees too much garbage
| coming from an account, he'll ban the account. And he knows when
| people create new accounts to escape the ban. I haven't heard him
| say so, but if it gets too spammy, I presume that he'll block the
| IP.
| rdtwo wrote:
| lol did you just say ban the ip like it means something in the
| age of modern bots and web scraping
| devKnight wrote:
| There are bots that scrap for emails on the monthly who's hiring
| etc posts. Made the mistake once of posting my email in the
| original formatting, got some funny scam emails. So they are
| still around
| giantg2 wrote:
| I think part of it is the content isn't particularly useful for a
| bot to act on (not pushing products, not a lot of politics, etc).
| Another could b the audience is tech savvy, so they're less
| likely to fall for bot stuff and more likely to report it. Then
| the moderation is higher quality than many other sites. Finally,
| the overall population here is low, so it's a smaller target.
|
| That said, I do occasionally wonder if certain of the comments
| are from real people. Although an occasional comment from me
| could have others thinking the same.
| garry wrote:
| One answer: @dang
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I know mod-worship is fashionable around here but... bullshit.
|
| One mod wasn't sufficient to keep bots at bay on a podunk PHP
| forum with hundreds of members 15yr ago. It's not sufficient to
| stem the tide of far, far better bots that lurk the internet
| today. There's other mechanisms at play.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Sounds suspiciously like something a bot would say to have us
| let our guard down...
| tomcam wrote:
| > There's other mechanisms at play.
|
| And they are...?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| It's a bunch of people who have the critical thinking
| skills required to spot bots (not saying they used them).
| Nothing is bought, sold or recommended to be bought or sold
| here. It's already somewhat of an ideological echo chamber
| and it's not really a place for mass market news and trends
| so few are coming here looking to be informed about things
| the people buying bot time care about.
|
| So basically it's a tough nut to crack for little gain. Why
| bother when you can write Reddit bots that are far more
| impactful and will earn far more money.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Worship and respect are easily confused yet distinct. Using
| worship as a slur indicates a lack of understanding why the
| respect exists (because the job is thankless and yet executed
| well continually).
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Crediting someone for something for which there are
| alternate explanations and for which the credited party
| could not have reasonably have pulled off is solidly in the
| worship camp.
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(page generated 2022-03-30 23:01 UTC)