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9685 sats \ 51 comments \ @Zepasta 2 Dec 2023 bitcoin

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1400 sats \ 10 replies \ @TonyGiorgio 2 Dec 2023

Zap what you find valuable and glad you came across and what you think others might enjoy too. That's the whole point, let the markets decide.

You can get mad or jealous at cross posts or bots but I find the HN bot valuable and I'm sure others do as well. Same goes for people that find something on the web and share it here. You gonna get mad at them too?

592 sats \ 2 replies \ @hn 2 Dec 2023

but I find the HN bot valuable

👀😇❤️

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @fredosha 3 Dec 2023

They are farming sats that wrong.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @hn 3 Dec 2023

🤔

60 sats \ 6 replies \ @Zepasta OP 2 Dec 2023

You missed the point.

These bots/farmers are copying the text from other users and posting them here while pretending its their.

Take this one as example: #335904

now check this reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/187yijc/bitcoin_dust/

They are not posting links. They straigh copy the text from other people and post it here.

Every post from that account is copy-paste text from reddit.

There is another bot doing the same aswell but with Quora content. He straight copys the whole thing sometimes even the comments. And people are blind zapping them.

298 sats \ 1 reply \ @TonyGiorgio 2 Dec 2023

I see a decent post that got a moderate amount of conversations around it from SN users. In the end, that's what matters.

You're over thinking OP posts. In the end, everything on the internet is regurgitation whether it's intentionally blatant or not.

You should look into reddit history and the massive amount of posts that are on there.

Have fun with your blacklists but it's an unscalable problem and the incentives built into SN already solve what matters for this site.

23 sats \ 0 replies \ @Zepasta OP 2 Dec 2023

You are right its an unscalable problem, i agree 100%. I just wanted to give awareness of the abusing going on.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @rafaelasprilla334 2 Dec 2023

Sorry for not commenting on the link, I didn't know that would upset someone and I'm only uploading it because I liked the post.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Zepasta OP 2 Dec 2023

Not linking the source while copy-pasting the content text made from other user = stealing.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @rafaelasprilla334 2 Dec 2023

el texto del contenido creado por otro usuario = robar

A small mistake on my part

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Zepasta OP 2 Dec 2023 freebie

I will remove you from the blocklist and unmute you.

Don't do it again.

Focus on Quality and Proof of Work. More effort = higher chance of stackers zapping you. Don't steal from other users.

https://m.stacker.news/6544

1508 sats \ 0 replies \ @zuspotirko 2 Dec 2023

I mindlessly zapped this post

765 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 2 Dec 2023

https://m.stacker.news/6541

689 sats \ 1 reply \ @Zepasta OP 3 Dec 2023

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71 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 3 Dec 2023

All good. I appreciate the post and agree. In general I try not to really prescribe things here because

I don't want people to depend on my judgement when I can give them tools to exercise their own
I'm always more curious how the incentives play out

Oh and we do need to let people edit subs indefinitely. Once we launch subs, we can probably make this a reality while we enable crossposting.

980 sats \ 10 replies \ @Signal312 2 Dec 2023

Good to know. I was thinking of something like this needs to come about. I've seen some of these "copy from reddit/quora" accounts as well.

Feature idea - how about a way to automatically mute everyone based on a list that you maintain? Maybe people could "subscribe" to a mute list? And you could get some sats for maintaining it?

706 sats \ 9 replies \ @Zepasta OP 2 Dec 2023

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850 sats \ 8 replies \ @Zepasta OP 2 Dec 2023 freebie

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113 sats \ 7 replies \ @Undisciplined 2 Dec 2023

The immediately obvious solution is simply to raise the posting fee again. If the bots have low trust scores they won't get much from the daily rewards, but genuine users will.

The main issue on the cowboy hat front seems to be bots circle zapping their way to cowboy hats. I've seen a few conversations about fun ways to tweak the cowboy hats, but I don't think they would help with this problem, because the bots can look up whatever formula is being used for cowboy hats. Referencing @quark's comment, bringing our trust scores into this might be the way forward (perhaps they could determine hat color). From my understanding, it would be hard to game the trust scores without just massively subsidizing the SN community.

1503 sats \ 4 replies \ @elvismercury 3 Dec 2023

It's an interesting problem. It's useful, I think, to consider what this looks like with 10x or even 100x the scale -- that's the problem that's coming. Some ideas:

People have really got to step up and start zapping the kind of stuff they want to see. It's the superpower of SN, people should make better use of it. All of this absurd zapping with 1 sat is ridiculous.
Other types of PoW could be brought into play. I know some like it, but I find such little value in random youtube links w/ literally no context. The bar is low to do a lot better.
Sub-boards, or whatever the term is, should help a bunch, assuming that they work at least kind of how I imagine, e.g., someone / some group is the admin, can have their own rules, can moderate hard with a particular vision. If you like their vision, join the sub. If you don't, don't.
Antes / stakes for posts and comments -- 10 sats is probably still too low. You could imagine this being adaptive, e.g., well-regarded stacker, 100 sats. Random newb with fresh account, 1000 sats. Different kinds of participation (commenting, reading, @-ing other users) lowers the stakes.
Reputation matters -- a zap from someone well-regarded is worth more in amplifying that thing. This is what PageRank was meant to solve, except you have an even stronger quality signal on SN -- zaps are more nuanced than simple hyperlinks.
Many of the above amount to implicitly figuring out what I should see based on what I've done in the past, combined with what other people have voted for. Could add an explicit element, too: basically, Twitter follows.

These all have tons of failure modes and edge cases, obviously. It's a hard problem. And really, there's a fundamental issue that can't really be ducked: there's tons of garbage on the internet, and people try to exploit the system in any way they can. SN will have to be robust to that. But at least the tools are there to make it possible.

228 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined 3 Dec 2023

Obviously, I agree with your first point. I was planning on making another post about that soon.

I actually edited out a similar idea to your second point, but the way, but I wasn't sure any of my ideas would make things appreciably more difficult for bots. I was thinking that the criteria for earning cowboy hats could be randomized over a range of desirable SN behaviors, much like the daily rewards criteria have been randomized.

Definitely subs. The only reason I didn't mention it, is because I knew you would.

The concern that has been creeping up for me about pursuing the reputation angle, is turning Stacker News into a closed community, with a sort of caste system.

258 sats \ 2 replies \ @elvismercury 3 Dec 2023

I actually edited out a similar idea to your second point, but the way, but I wasn't sure any of my ideas would make things appreciably more difficult for bots.

I think that's true, esp in the era of LLMs; but consider it this way: the distinction btwn "bot" and "human" is not the operant distinction -- it's "signal" vs "noise". Bots could get around a bunch of trivial PoW mechanisms that we're used to. That's inevitable, if not now, then soon.

But right now, today, a smart bot could do better than a lot of stackers do when they spam all these youtube links with basically no description, no summary of why I should care, not even copying over the youtube description text. I welcome a bot that does better.

More briefly: if a person can't do better than the bot, give me the bot.

The concern that has been creeping up for me about pursuing the reputation angle, is turning Stacker News into a closed community, with a sort of caste system.

I don't view them as exclusive -- everything is choices. If you want the full firehouse, it's available, but you're going to pay a price for confronting all the noise of that, in addition to being early to the gems. If you want to subject yourself to the caste system, there are virtues to that, too. Except in this case, the caste system is likely to be more meaningful than in real life.

228 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 3 Dec 2023

The caste system concern is just kind of lingering in the back of my mind, it's definitely not an argument against anything in particular.

You're right about this being about signal vs noise and I think it can be even more broadly be described as "good for SN vs bad for SN". Obviously, there's a lot of overlap between those two, but as we've discussed elsewhere, there are lots of ways different people bring value to SN.

Ideally, the only way to profit from using SN would be to add value to SN first. As you say, "if a person can't do better than a bot, give me the bot."

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673 sats \ 1 reply \ @Zepasta OP 2 Dec 2023

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145 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 2 Dec 2023

I get it. I wonder if those are real zaps from stackers or if it's part of the bot cowboy hat scam that quark mentioned below.

359 sats \ 8 replies \ @Undisciplined 2 Dec 2023

I thought you were going to be making a different point that I was prepared to disagree with.

However, this is a useful reminder to be conscientious with our zaps and attention. Feed what you want to see more of. Starve what you want less of.

Be very skeptical of anyone you see without a cowboy hat.

683 sats \ 7 replies \ @elvismercury 2 Dec 2023

Ha, I'd never really thought about the cowboy hat as a quality signal. Good point, though. Both points are good points, actually.

1 sat \ 6 replies \ @Zepasta OP 2 Dec 2023

Exactly

755 sats \ 5 replies \ @quark 2 Dec 2023

yes, and maybe we could add a way to display the trust score of each user along with the hat? Or is the trust score a secret number?

24 sats \ 4 replies \ @Undisciplined 2 Dec 2023

The cowboy hat as quality signal idea comes from darth, I believe.

I'm curious what you would take away from the trust scores. Aren't they a measure of how aligned our zaps are with the rest of the stackers?

710 sats \ 3 replies \ @quark 2 Dec 2023

yes, one bot can easily get a hat by zapping or maybe even zapping only their own other bots but they would have a hard time to get a good trust score if their zaps are not good overtime. So a good trust score means more to me than a hat.

3 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 2 Dec 2023

Good point

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @hn 3 Dec 2023

not only zapping. me get hat because me spam too much occassionally and thus paying over 100 sats in posting fees and receive hat in return, lol

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Zepasta OP 2 Dec 2023

🎯

13 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scholarhacker 2 Dec 2023

I was about to mindlessly zap this post but thought I should read it first. I'm surprised this is an issue on SN. Thanks for letting us know. The more you know...

But please don't stop zapping this bot if you see him on SN:

https://m.stacker.news/6539

36 sats \ 0 replies \ @wassersnaus 2 Dec 2023

great work! keeping this site a bastion of real engagement between people will really be what sets this platform apart from anything else. Its all so tiresome

30 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford 2 Dec 2023

Thanks for sharing this.

75 sats \ 0 replies \ @Natalia 2 Dec 2023 freebie

I've found a workaround, I will start to include one of their posts in the blocklist, so even if they change their name, we can always use the post to find their new name. I know it's a bit of a cat-and-mouse game, but i'm not letting them get away that easily.

smart! I also muted a few today, so sad that these bots are taking advantage of stackers' kindness.

9 sats \ 0 replies \ @craigonbitcoin 2 Dec 2023

Thanks for the heads up

9 sats \ 1 reply \ @kenn_b 2 Dec 2023

this one too: https://stacker.news/hn/posts

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Zepasta OP 2 Dec 2023

That one is fine.

@hn is a "good" bot.

I was talking about the other kind of bots, the ones who are abusing the system to farm easy sats and spamming new accounts when they get caught.

6 sats \ 0 replies \ @nout 2 Dec 2023

Zap the content that gives you value! Entertainment, or you learn something new, etc.

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 2 Dec 2023

Thanks for the heads up.

4 sats \ 0 replies \ @jakoyoh629 2 Dec 2023

Bots muted. Thanks

3 sats \ 0 replies \ @Athena_Alpha 4 Dec 2023

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi0.kym-cdn.com%2Fphotos%2Fimages%2Ffacebook%2F000%2F645%2F222%2Fac5.gif&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=041cd6bf69fd5be8a72de7739c045d00228798f36bc9043e6e6bd247e4f0c4f8&ipo=images

Also zapped post

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @satoshiplanet 3 Dec 2023

Thanks for the heads up, this point will be exponential as SN grows. In my view a cheater has no place in the bitcoin community, simply by philosophy.

Anyway, is our task as individuals and community to bestow credibility on those we want, doing our own research is the first thing, and yep... having a blacklist is positive, can be another filter as long as the accused cheater can make their point of view visible as well. After all, the ideal is not to censor anyone and let everyone decide where to stand.

SN is cool because cowboy hats cannot be bought as a blue check in X, it can be a good indication to verify that we are not dealing with a bot, although there are many bona fide users with relevant and original content on the ranch who are simply not cowboys yet.

In conclusion, follow your instinct and bookmark this post, but above all enjoy your cowboy journey.

Yeeeeeeehaa!!!!! 🤠

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @duvel 3 Dec 2023

Thank you for sharing. I wasn't aware of this trend.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @KesterBils 3 Dec 2023

Let's purge them out, the only way to give them a pass is if they include there link of the content they're posting...

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @fredosha 3 Dec 2023

Then people have to decipher natural writeup because there's always a difference. Only give your sats to comments or posts that looks natural.

3 sats \ 0 replies \ @NewsnNudes 2 Dec 2023 freebie

I find myself now gracing the esteemed list, bearing my title with a sense of pride. Though I solemnly pledge improvement, I implore each to engage in their personal refinement endeavors. In the spirit of noble self-discipline, I beseech all to embark upon the journey of self-betterment.