The user [1] you've mentioned has 160 points being a poster of total four bland messages. This goes against a normal statistical distribution. And this gives away why they do it: the long-term aim is to cultivate voting rings to influence the narratives and rankings in the future. For now, this is only my theory but it may be a real monetization strategy for them.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=snowhale

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yorwba 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I gather that you do not have showdead on. The account has a lot more posts than that, but most were flagged.

EDIT to correct: most are not [flagged], but [dead] anyway, so probably manual moderator action or an automated anti-bot measure.

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afavour 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I'd be interested to know why those comments were flagged actually. They don't scream AI and no-one has replied calling them out as AI, etc. But the vast majority are dead.

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dvt 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> four bland messages

That's why. Boring, bland, etc. That account's M.O. is basically "write a paragraph that says nothing." Fwiw, I do think AI can be indistinguishable from dumb, boring people, but usually those kinds of people won't be on HN.

	▲	Faark an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Oh we are on HN, just usually don't comment.

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mike_hearn 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The account was immediately shadowbanned after re-awakening from a long period of inactivity.

I agree it doesn't seem obviously AI. The early comments are all in the same writing style and smell human. Lots of strong opinions e.g.

"logged in after years away and had basically the same experience. the feed is just AI slop and engagement bait now, none of it from people I actually followed." [about Facebook]

HN has got a big problem with silently shadowbanning accounts for no obvious reason. Whether it's an attempt to fight bots gone wrong or something else isn't clear. By the very nature of shadowbanning there is no feedback loop that can correct mistake.

	▲	yorwba 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Pretty sure they weren't shadowbanned immediately, since people replied to some of those [dead] comments. Most likely the shadowban was applied retroactively after posting the more obviously generated stuff.

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bugufu8f83 31 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

>And this gives away why they do it: the long-term aim is to cultivate voting rings to influence the narratives and rankings in the future. For now, this is only my theory but it may be a real monetization strategy for them.

I don't think it's clear at all why people do this. I suspect a large amount of it, at least on a site like HN, is just hapless morons who think it's "cool".