Most are actually spam, slop, or obvious self promotion.

Did you actually check the current ones?

Since dead posts are only shown to logged in users we can't even use archive.org to check the reliability of the flagging

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kay_o 13 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes and I browse with showdead on to vouch for reasonable items.

Currently on new for dead/flagged: new account self spam / new account zero effort ai slop spam / new account zero effort ai slop spam / show hn ai slop with all default llm design / spam / spam / spam / account that has never posted anything but its own blog / spam (all of dev.to is dead afaik, because it is nothing but a spam source; there are no useful posts on it)

There is nothing that I consider even slightly interesting or reasonable or innovative to hackers. I am also not anti-gen AI but there is a line between "person has used claude to create something" and "literal zero-effort unreviewed trash that is a waste of the environment". >99% of ones I'm see in /new is the latter.

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g-b-r 12 hours ago | parent [-]

Ok, a link like https://news.ycombinator.com/newest?next=48799132&n=31 (the current second page) is actually stable, so let's do a a review of that.

The two submissions from bamei2ai are not working links, so no questions about them.

Most of the others are from new or very low karma accounts, ok, but is it forbidden to submit something before having gained a good karma? Are submissions from such accounts killed automatically?

The only dead post left is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48798889 , I'm not sure what's wrong about it

	▲	altairprime 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Reported #36 site by email for possible astroturfing. Reported #48 user by email for volume. Reviewed all existing [dead] instances and they seem appropriately so for various reasons. Reported a possible antispam bug that, if I’m right, when fixed would mark two more as [dead]. There’s nothing particularly unusual about this page of /new. I opened up current /new after finishing this post and on page one found a YouTube link, which made me think “that’s odd”, looked more closely, and ended up writing a twenty minute mod email reporting several more sites for spam; the future [dead] count will increase accordingly. > is it forbidden to submit something before having gained a good karma? Not precisely, but it’s in really poor taste after the first time, and I believe the mods tightened up the Show HN thresholds a bit recently due oto the codeslop flood. This is a community, not a marketing channel; if they’re not here to submit and/or discuss other people’s work, then it should come as no surprise that we’re not here to discuss theirs either. > Are submissions from such accounts killed automatically? Not that I’ve seen. Certainly lots of them end up killed b/c spam bots are detectable, but it’s not uniform. But, as I said a couple weeks ago in a variation of this post: Either genuinely invest time and energy into this community or move on. > I'm not sure what's wrong about it #51: Boring submission. Poor composition skills, no effort invested in even basic capitalization. Open admission of AI-generated writing: “The site is a bit slop”. Deserves as much attention as effort invested. This post could have been replaced by a training harness. User has only <100 karma on an account 5,000+ days old, so this is less a site participant, more a fly-by-night forum spammer as their participation stands right now. I would flag this if it wasn’t already flagged. Thanks to whatever HN system or user saved me having to do so.
	▲	11 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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newsomix9xl 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Would it be useful if it said "flagged - spam" or "flagged self promotion" or "flagged - slop"?

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g-b-r 13 hours ago | parent [-]

You should be required to provide a reason when flagging something, possibly choosing from a set of common and legitimate reasons.

And if it's some Hacker News own bot doing some of the killing, that should be declared.

And a ton of other things, I like Hacker News's interface and in part its user base, but I'd change much of the rest.

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altairprime 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> You should be required to provide a reason when flagging something, possibly choosing from a set of common and legitimate reasons.

Dang said on the AI guidelines post that they’re working on this now.

> And if it's some Hacker News own bot doing some of the killing, that should be declared.

First rule of antispam is do not publish the details of antispam decisions automatically. This post could have been replaced by an email to the mods asking what’s going on here. I’ve learned of a few possible automated systems that could be engaging in parallel while reviewing /new posts and flagging and reporting folks and sites by email to them.

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autoexec 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Would showing exactly why posts were flagged make it easier for spammers to tune their submissions to avoid getting those flags? Would knowing that they were flagged for one thing but not another make it easier for for them to identify what it was that let them slip past undetected? I think moderation here works pretty well, and I'd hesitate to change it too much.

	▲	altairprime 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Would showing exactly why posts were flagged make it easier for spammers to tune their submissions to avoid getting those flags? Yes. > Would knowing that they were flagged for one thing but not another make it easier for for them to identify what it was that let them slip past undetected? Yes.
	▲	g-b-r 12 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Would showing exactly why posts were flagged make it easier for spammers to tune their submissions to avoid getting those flags? It seems unlikely it would help much, to me. But I'm still trying to understand if an automated flagging system is in place to begin with. It would help reviewers a lot in salvaging unjustly flagged posts, though. > I think moderation here works pretty well I don't