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Ask HN: Should bots actively be banned on HN

2025-05-1323:22412

I saw the top comment on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43970837 and started thinking if there are rules against using bots to write comments. Personally I wouldn’t have spotted it but some people pointed out the use of dashes and then I felt duped. What are your thoughts on thi...

I saw the top comment on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43970837 and started thinking if there are rules against using bots to write comments. Personally I wouldn’t have spotted it but some people pointed out the use of dashes and then I felt duped. What are your thoughts on this? Catching ChatGPT generated comments vs human responses isn’t easy, but in the case of that specific comment I felt “double duped” as the comment also described an experience from real life.

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Comments

  • By toomuchtodo 2025-05-1323:23

  • By Tomte 2025-05-1410:09

    > but some people pointed out the use of dashes

    That’s a stupid heuristic. I use those dashes all the time, I even have an AutoHotKey macro in Windows for en and em dashes, ellipsis and other characters.

  • By MarcoDewey 2025-05-1323:372 reply

    What if - some of us - just like to use excessive - dashes when writing -- ?

    • By beAbU 2025-05-146:30

      You are not using em-dashes so you check out. Please proceed.

    • By onecommentman 2025-05-140:10

      What’s - excessive - about that anyway? It’s - just - the written equivalent - of William Shatner’s acting style. Worked for him.

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