Comment by king_geedorah
4 hours ago
This opinion would hold much more weight if it weren’t coming from an account created literal days ago in an age where LLM-enabled astroturfing is so obviously everywhere online and especially on this forum.
Additionally the same companies promoting the use of AI now have been significant cultural drivers in many of the things you claim are the reasons to choose an AI answer, so it would seem a healthy amount of skepticism towards solutions offered by the co-creators of the problem is warranted.
If it helps, I could have written this comment just about word for word, and you can check my account and see that I’m clearly human.
I would probably add that I’m nervous about AI search results and how it affects the future of the internet and content creation in general, but from the perspective of a user, I’m pleased with the direction.
Same thoughts exactly.
I wonder if Google is aware of its identity crisis? Even long after "don't be evil", Google was still "we earn so much from a healthy web that making the web a healthy one is almost a straight forward company interest". Now web content is actively relegated to training input and LLM chat replacing delegating to the source, that web that Google made so much money of, as healthy or not one considered it to be, will soon be gone. Could be either at Google, complete lack of awareness or desperate "we can't stop it but we might still try to profit a little from what we can't stop"
I don’t doubt that people feel this way. I doubt that every new account inflating the apparent consensus is genuine.
Have you bothered to check @nekzn’s comment history? Attacking new people here is going to ensure we’re left with only bots. This is one of the reasons why HN has the guidelines that you’re repeatedly breaking. If you do suspect a bot after at least taking the ten seconds to check their comment history, the best thing you can do is not engage.
1 reply →
From the HN guidelines:
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
There is no insinuation. The astroturfing objectively occurs and that it does so is an inherent strain on the credibility of engagement like that of the GP.
To me, it read like you implied the poster to be an astroturfing account. Though I may have misinterpreted that.
5 replies →
There is plenty of unfounded AI-hype astroturfing going on in HN that each instance absolutely deserves to be called out. This guideline is somewhat antiquated for the LLM era. Reporting posts and accounts spitting out blatant LLM-slop does nothing, by the way.
Then take it from my account that is years old, as I also hold the same opinion that the AI overview is very useful to me as like the parent it usually contains exactly the information I need.
My account is older than yours by a decade and I also like the AI overview more often than not, or rather, I instinctively know when to skip it depending on my query.
I think the greater issue in this discussion is that the TechCrunch author, like most blogger/journalists are facing a complete erasure of their business model and have a vested interest at opposing this
As not a Large Language Model, I also like the AI overview feature.