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Comment by throwaway2037

1 day ago

    > classic HackerNews title shortening algorithm

Woah, this is a wild claim. @dang: Is this a thing? I don't believe it. I, myself, have submitted many articles and never once did I see some auto-magical "title shortening algorithm" at work!

It's not exactly an auto-magical "title shortening algorithm"; just a simple software function that cleans up titles by removing common title patterns that are baity, abusive, ugly or superfluous.

It wasn't the cause of this change; the submitter submitted it without the “with help from AI” part, for some reason.

It's been confirmed by @dang many times before. I'm not sure if that's what cut the title here but I've seen it many times in the last 10 years.