Analysis of Bot Activity and Content Quality Decline on Hacker News
By
todsacerdoti
3mo ago· 1 min readenInsight
46/100
Doughy
Bagelometer↗
All dough, no crust. Filling but forgettable.
Score46TypeanalysisSentimentnegative
Summary
The article discusses concerns about an increase in bot activity on Hacker News (HN), noting that new accounts appear to be posting nonsensical or low-quality content. The author describes seeing accounts posting gibberish text and numbers, and observes that the overall quality of comments has declined with more banal or off-topic posts. The author mentions plans to scrape comment data to analyze the issue further.
Key quotes
· 5 pulledI've had this sense that HN has gotten absolutely innundated with bots last few months.
First most obvious giveaway is the frequency with which you see accounts posting brilliant insights like...
Beyond the accounts that are visibly glitching out, the vibe is also seriously off.
Lots of comments that are incredibly banal, or oddly off topic.
Hard to really put a finger on how, but I had the idea of scraping /newcomments and /noobcomments to see if I could make sense of it.
I’ve had this sense that HN has gotten absolutely innundated with bots last few months. First most obvious giveaway is the frequency with which you see accounts posting brilliant insights like
13 60 well and t6ctctfuvuh7hguhuig8h88gd to f6gug7h8j8h6fzbuvu
