HACKER Q&A
📣 overgard

Can we talk about AI Astroturfing?


Well first, I don't mean this as a shot at the mods that do a great job.

I'm noticing a lot of posts and comments around AI seem like industry plants. Look, I recognize that people are excited about AI and want to share their perspectives, and I'm not trying to accuse people that disagree with me of being industry plants, but the recent one about "I love coding at 60 now because of Claude Code!" by a new user with "cc" at the end of their name seems a LITTLE suspicious. As is the number of upvotes -- I can understand how a new model gets a lot of excitement, but a stranger on the internet enjoying the new model doesn't seem like 800 points worthy?

I'm not trying to spark a controversy here, but I'm wondering if others feel the same or if I'm just overreacting.

  👤 cianuro_ Accepted Answer ✓
To me this is another sign the written word is dead.

With so many mechanisms for creating users and posting en masse, I find it really hard to believe the contents of any comment or post I read that goes past a paragraph or two. And of course I am still skeptical even if it is less than 2 paragraphs of text.

I find the contents of that specific post hard to believe. Specially since the user hasn't participated in the conversation at all.

I like this place a lot and it saddens me we are just going to see more of this.

👤 uberman
I'm guilty of upvoting that and in fact I did not even read it. Here is the thing though. I'm older, not 60 but older for a coder and the sentiment in the title alone resonates with me. If I upvoted it then I can see many others doing so. Is it worth 600 points? I dont know but it was worth 1 from me.
👤 maxwg
Do you have links to examples? I normally lurk HN, but I can't say I've seen much of this popup to the front page at least.

I'd say the bigger problem would be AI posters/commentors, though I've not seen as much of them versus certain subreddits which are just probably more bots than human...

👤 Jtsummers
Hide, flag, or ignore. We've always had hype content (cryptocurrency content, for instance) and spam content on this site. Just flag it (to drop its ranking, especially if you think it is spam or doesn't belong here), hide it (if you think it could belong here but are uninterested in it), or ignore it (same as hiding, but you'll still have to scroll past it).
👤 cal_dent
It's one of those things where I feel the same thing but at the same time also question whether I'm overreacting to. Sort of in a similar way where there is so much stuff that feels like it's ai written (with little or no attempt to even tweak it from the immediate ai output) out in the real world Internet spaces.

I don't know. It all feels quite unstable in a gaslighty way. All I can really is I suspect the world is not ready for llm advertising and the unintended consequences from the drift to it is going to be wild

👤 skydhash
One of the things that I've noticed more the last year is the use of downvotes for disagreement. I believed downvotes were more about flagging for disruptions. I rarely upvote other for something that I truly agree (I equate it to full applause from me) and I downvoted (even rarer) things that derails the thread.
👤 dudewhocodes
The referenced post has a very high change of being planted. The upvote count is an anomaly for a brand new account, few sentences, no link, Tell HN post.

I upvoted it by mistake, it looked genuine. However the comments contain a lot of "everything is awesome" responses without backing up their claims. The poster does not participate in the discussion at all.

I like HN but it seems to be getting spammed with hidden ads.

👤 ghostlyInc
Astroturfing is probably happening, but I also think HN titles trigger emotional upvotes.

If a title resonates ("coding at 60 again") people often upvote before even reading the post.

That alone can create these huge spikes.

👤 gitowiec
What means Astroturfing?