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People probably didn't see the other post, but both posts are several paragraphs and posted the same minute. No human would do that.

Its also a new account that only posted these two posts.

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Good spot, thanks for pointing it out. I normally don't like the LLM accusation posts, but two posts from a brand new user in the same minute is a pretty huge red flag for bad behavior.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46886472

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46886470

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This is another bot I pointed out yesterday:

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Soerensen

Their comment got flagged, but looks like they made a new one today and is still active.

That account ('Soerensen') was created in 2024 and dormant until it made a bunch of detailed comments in the past 24-48 hrs. Some of them are multiple paragraph comments posted within 1 minute of each other.

One thing I've noticed is that they seem to be getting posted from old/inactive/never used accounts. Are they buying them? Creating a bunch and waiting months/years before posting?

Either way, both look like they're fooling people here. And getting better at staying under the radar until they slip up in little ways like this.

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I wonder if it's actual users with dormant accounts who just setup their Moltbot?
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Some, maybe, but that's just another nice layer of plausible deniability.

The truth is that the internet is both(what's the word for 'both' when you have three(four?) things?) dead, an active cyber- and information- warzone and a dark forest.

I suppose it was fun while it lasted. At least we still have mostly real people in our local offline communities.

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Gives this old cartoon new meaning, I suppose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet%2C_nobody_know...

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Old account, fresh comments - to make it more clear. Freaky.
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So what, if the content is good?

Also, some of us draft our comments offline, and then paste them in. Maybe he drafted two comments?

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Posting sibling comments is unusual.
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Funny, you're definitely right -- I've done it probably just 2 or 3 times over a decade, when I felt like I had two meaningful but completely unrelated things to say. And it always felt super weird, almost as if I was being dishonest or something. Could never quite put my finger on why. Or maybe I was worried it would look like I was trying to hog the conversation?
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I don’t know about the particular claim about the new account — if true, based on what people have said, this would be consistent with an LLM bot with high probability … (but not completely out of the question for a person) … I’ll leave that analysis up to the moderators who have a better statistical understanding of server logs, etc.

That said, as a general point, it’s reasonable to make scoped comments in the corresponding parts of the conversation tree. (Is that what happened here?)

About me: I try to pay attention to social conventions, but I rarely consider technology offered to me as some sort of intrinsically correct norm; I tend to view it as some minimally acceptable technological solution that is easy enough to build and attracts a lowest common denominator of traction. But most forums I see tend to pay little attention to broader human patterns around communication; generally speaking, it seems to me that social technology tends to expect people to conform to it rather than the other way around. I think it’s fair to say that the history of online communication has demonstrated a tendency of people to find workarounds to the limitations offered them. (Using punctuation for facial expressions comes to mind.)

One might claim such workarounds are a feature rather than a bug. Maybe sometimes? But I think you’d have to dig into the history more and go case by case. I tend to think of features as conscious choices not lucky accidents.

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