Ask HN: How do we deal with "hacking" Hacker News?
3 pointsby jumploops4 hours ago4 comments
  • minimaxir4 hours ago
    People submitting posts to HN automatically has been a thing; the rise of AI agents hasn't changed that and has not affected HN's "immune system". People who need agents to growth hack tend to have crappy sites that already signal said immune system so it works out.

    1.5k views is not a lot of views and is more damning by faint praise.

  • Tbarlow3 hours ago
    The signal-to-noise problem isn't new, but agents make the cost of noise near zero. Flagging scales with human attention, which is exactly the resource being drained.
  • uberman3 hours ago
    If the contnet aligns with the interests of this community as apparently it did generation a bunch of views that I'll take your word for, then if it really a problem? If the community does not like something they can ignore downvote and flag and it will go wherever the crap goes.
    • guiambros3 hours ago
      I tend to agree, although I wonder if we won't get flooded by agents pretending to be regular users and submitting their slop to HN. It might well be happening already (e.g., [1]).

      Worse: it will get harder to differentiate what is a legitimate ShowHN from a nefarious agent trying to infiltrate malware. Yes, supply-chain attacks existed for ages, but now script kiddies can create xz-level attacks without even realizing it.

      [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49667385

  • tmpsvc2695f53 hours ago
    [dead]