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Comment by Hnrobert42

7 hours ago

I've read HN almost everyday for about 10 years. Maybe I'm naive, but I don't see it. I see way more folks complaining that comments are AI generated.

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Hnrobert42

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kylecazar  7 hours ago

Yeah, the up/down voting mechanism seems to be doing it's job for me too. Don't think I've noticed a degradation in, say, the top third of comments. That's where I try to live anyway.

/newest is chock full of submissions that were written by AI, though. That's another, broader problem.

brg  6 hours ago

To add to the collection of anecdata, your experience is similar to mine. I have been more exhausted recently by the complaints of AI submissions and pseudo analysis of AI comments than exhausted by the supposed AI generated comments themselves.

subsection1h  5 hours ago

I've been using HN since 2008 when I created my first account[1] and I use HN differently than most people. I have a group of bookmarked searches that I visit almost daily that relate to technologies that interest me, such as Emacs.

In the past year, the searches I perform that relate to web development show a horrifying increase in the amount of Show HN posts that are posted by new accounts, include AI generated descriptions and point to AI generated projects on GitHub.

In 2024, there were 17,661 Show HN posts.[2] In the past year, there have been over 448,000 Show HN posts![3] And of course, most of these posts are AI generated.

Also, if you check the new accounts posting all this AI slop, you'll see that some of them also post AI generated comments in other threads, which is the main problem.

But for me, what is even more annoying is the enormous increase in new accounts created by nontechnical vibecoders who now think of themselves as technologists and who post worthless, ignorant comments that actually get upvoted, presumably by similar folks who have unfortunately been creating accounts at HN in the past 10 years or so.

As a result, 2026 is the first year in which I visit HN about once a week instead of about once a day.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=zartan

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22Show+HN%22&dateRange=custom...

[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22Show+HN%22&dateRange=pastYe...

  • subsection1h  5 hours ago

    The fact that this discussion was flagged might be the final nail in the coffin for me. The huge increase in AI generated comments and posts at HN is a topic that has been discussed on other forums for months now. Complaints include "Orange Reddit", "Orange LinkedIn", etc. But when the topic comes up at HN, it gets flagged. Fuck this.

    • waygtdai  3 hours ago

      I don’t care for the karma, but I wish dang would intentionally unflag this and have it on front page so people can voice their concerns.