I have just seen with my own eyes Claude astroturfing on a gamedev subreddit from a botting account that was picked up by Google so I could see a few of their other comments. This account's operation was going on development subs complaining about how good Claude's latest model is and how awful it is being afraid of losing one's job to AI.

I know your comment is tongue-in-cheek and the poster here is kinda known, but this kind of astroturfing is a new low and it's everywhere on forums such as these.

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Aurornis 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I see a lot of these posts on Reddit, too, but I don't think it's actually Anthropic or Claude doing it. It's the same old Reddit karma farmers picking up on the latest trends. They've always combined headlines with ragebait to build karma and now LLM bots make it easier than ever.

It's too bad Reddit allows accounts to hide their comment history now. That was an easy way to identify bot accounts before they started allowing accounts to hide their post history

	▲	AlecSchueler 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That is a pity but on the bright side it also helps people to avoid being stalked and harassed.

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rdevilla 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The whole internet is like this now, and it's only just getting started. Makes me sick tbh, and I am still questioning if this is the kind of industry I want to work in.

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MikeNotThePope 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

For those who remember Digg, the recently relaunched a new version and shut it down almost immediately. They were getting hammered with AI bots when it was realized the Digg apparently still has good SEO. The explain it right on homepage.

https://digg.com/

	▲	dwedge 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They explained it with an AI generated post

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sph 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I am still questioning if this is the kind of industry I want to work in

I'm not. I stick around for the popcorn, and I'm not gonna miss the schadenfreude in a few years.

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Bridged7756 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've been warning people of Anthropic's astroturfing for a while now. The amount of "Insert latest model/Claude Code is scary. I'm worried about my job" posts, followed by a doom ridden writing about how their job was automated and 30 dudes got fired and the person is pivoting into plumbing or something or working at Mcdonalds, is just too suspicious not to note. Sometimes it's more covert. They don't mention any provider/model. Sometimes there's a subtle insert somewhere in the body, Opus, Claude, etc.

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refulgentis 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I was really confused, then, realized the person you’re replying to misspelled “ad” as "add", and you’re moving forward with the premises GP is an ad, and this HN submission is an ad. Then, you share you saw a Reddit account on a gamedev subreddit complaining AI is too good, & they're worried they won’t have a job, and you believe that Reddit account must have been an ad for AI.

Just noting for fellow just-waking-up people

(edit: OP edited)

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CamperBob2 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's not necessarily astroturfing. There is a seismic shift under way regarding how things get done in this business, and if you don't acknowledge it, that's weird in itself.

	▲	ozmodiar 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I've certainly noticed a seismic shift in how bad support and updates have gotten with some 3rd party vendors we use, and the answer they come back with is always that they're experimenting with AI. Not saying AI isn't part of the job now, but it is getting seriously over hyped and over extended.
	▲	oulipo2 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It's absolutely not seismic. If you've used AI for a little bit, you'll realize it's good at writing boilerplate code. Any complex logic, and you better re-read and correct the code a few times until you trust it. Of course if all you do is "host wordpress website" (like 80% of what's "webdev" do), it will work. Now the issue is that the last 20% are the hardest to cover, and current AI methods will not get there (you need some much more complex methods, like being able to integrate logic with learning-based ML, to do this)