Comment by passthefist

10 years ago

Ha, that's my exact comment from the related reddit thread. Kinda cool, I wonder how often that happens?

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4msf41/elevate...

Spammers, presumably trying to build up karma on HN. Needless to say we've banned them and will continue to.

Watchful users can help out with this a lot. If you or anyone notice comments being cross-posted in the future, please alert us at hn@ycombinator.com.

And that indeed is what we have to look forward to in online forums over the next 5+ years, as machine learning cuts its teeth on places like reddit, HN & disqus, and spammers try to find new irritating ways of getting eyeballs.

You do realize he copied your comment, don't you?

  • Yeah, but I still wonder how often people copy comments around like that. It's not like that was some great writing or anything, but it was copied word for word.

    Maybe it was some bot, but that's an odd bot.

    • I've seen it happen on YouTube (not to me); highly upvoted comments get copy/pasted a month or two later to "steal" upvotes for someone else.

      It could be a bot tactic to build accounts with karma that can later be used for astroturfing, using proven comments from elsewhere. Maybe governments and organized astroturfers have automated that sort of thing more than we think.

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