HACKER Q&A
📣 txrx0000

How do we solve the bot flooding problem without destroying anonymity?


AI posts are becoming indistinguishable from human posts, and we can see it here on HN. The conventional response by website operators is to put in progressively tighter verification systems to distinguish bots and humans, but that eventually leads to the end of anonymity.

This is not an anti-AI rant. If a future AI agent truly has high quality posts and wants to use the site normally, that's fine. I'm talking about spam campaigns with hundreds of new accounts. We need new solutions to this problem.

I'll start by proposing a solution that could work for HN and similar forums. Feel free to iterate on it or propose your different ideas in the comments. Here goes:

For logged-in users, instead of ranking posts and comments on the server-side, the server only delivers a chronological feed + the current logged-in user's voting history.

Using the chronological feed as the base, each of your past votes changes the ranking of your feed by a tiny bit, and that's calculated client-side. You're more likely to see posts and comments from users you've upvoted in the past at the top.

In short, this means a new account will see a completely chronological feed, while an established account will see a feed modified by only their own past votes.

The public feed for non-logged-in users would still be ranked by the server. No changes there.

So each user gets a fully personalized bubble when logged in, except it's not a bubble because n=1. And it's really easy to break out of the bubble by logging out.

Spam bots can post and vote all they want, but they won't change the core userbase's experience that much, because the bots will only have access to a chronological feed. It has no taste, which is accumulated over time, and therefore can't spam votes and replies on real conversations nearly as much.

  👤 austin-cheney Accepted Answer ✓
Read this comment and use the script in the linked subject:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47203918

👤 drsalt
make spamming illegal give severe punishments and enforce the law
👤 fernando_campos
One issue I keep noticing is that most anti-bot systems optimize for blocking instead of increasing friction progressively.

Rate limits tied to behavioral patterns rather than identity seem to work better — especially interaction timing, navigation flow, or session consistency.

We experimented with something similar while building HiveHQ and found bots usually fail when systems require small contextual actions humans do naturally.

👤 allinonetools_
The biggest signal I have noticed over time is consistency, not just one good post. Accounts that participate normally for weeks build a kind of trust naturally. Maybe weighting activity history more than identity verification could help without hurting anonymity.
👤 bruceyao1984
could solve bot flooding by raising the cost of automation, not by removing anonymity. Techniques like behavioral detection, rate limiting, proof‑of‑work, reputation systems, and AI‑based anomaly detection can filter bots without requiring real‑world identity. The goal isn’t to know who you are — it’s to know whether you’re human.
👤 throwaway5465
Creates echo chambers, karma whoring 'power' accounts, rewards ego-posting and generally makes the experience about who says what not what is said. Worsens the problem.
👤 chistev
Haven't noticed any negative changes.
👤 hash07e
There is no way to solve it without going to tribalism.

Bots and AI right now as good as the "average" joe.

All the places that can move the perception of real people about products, politics or any form of power will and is being flooded with bots.

The reason for the "ID" on internet is not because of the children. But because the bots are soo good they need to use ID to filter what is bot or not. Avoiding the dead internet.

The powers that be NEED to sway perception and narrative to their liking.

think about the children! Epstein list, patriot act, etc.

👤 judahmeek
OP, you're on the right track.

The question you need to ask yourself is "What's the end game?"

What happens when users' feeds are full of users that they already know?

You think they'll be satisfied with that?

👤 youniverse
My mind goes to simple solutions like established communities having a $1 entry fee, for privacy use a privacy crypto maybe but that's a decent amount of friction for average folk with the current UX.

Another interesting idea that comes to mind is that every post/comment made needs the user to physically use their fingerprint scanner on their device which I assume plenty of devices have already. As long ad it can't be spoofed it works but not sure about the details about reliably securing that.

It would be some friction but I feel like it would be fine?