Ask HN: What's the endgame of the AI comments buried in every post?

A lot of submissions nowadays have a few LLM comments (whether directly written by an agent, or human with a LLM I don't know), often downvoted and sitting at the end of the comment section. No-one even bothers to call them out anymore, it's just part of the landscape. Just wondering why ? What's the point for these people ?

13 points | by elar_verole 1 day ago

6 comments

  • silverlinex 1 hour ago
    The AI comments are promoted here. It’s basically the whole point of the platform now.

    The ones being hidden are real people who HN censors.

  • cesargstn 1 day ago
    I think that to generate activity and make the post go viral
    • silverlinex 1 hour ago
      Stupid theory, the user would get nothing out of it.

      HN simply censors like crazy, bans and shadow bans real people while they promote their AI.

    • krapp 23 hours ago
      Go viral where? Hacker News doesn't feed into any other social media systems.
      • AnimalMuppet 22 hours ago
        On HN itself. More activity makes a post look like more people are interested in it. The algorithm that chooses what appears on the front page does take notice of the number of comments.

        Mind you, I'm not claiming that's what's actually going on. But that could be the intent.

        • krapp 21 hours ago
          Sure but if there are more comments than upvotes it triggers the flamewar detector and the thread gets weighted down. This forum interprets virality as damage and routes around it.

          Then again I suppose the bots could also be upvoting, but I would assume that would be detectable to the voting ring detectors.

          I don't know. Hacker News is supposed to be a place where human beings enjoy each other's company and conversation about common interests and intellectual pursuits but it seems like a lot of people here want to optimize the humanity out entirely.

  • michael-lehn 23 hours ago
    To get some upvote, to increase karma
    • JohnFen 19 hours ago
      But why? having a high karma doesn't really get you anything.
    • AnimalMuppet 22 hours ago
      But if, as OP said, they're getting downvotes, then it isn't working.
  • smt88 1 day ago
    Account “seasoning,” similar to reddit.

    They create an account and give it as human-like a history as possible (a few comments, enough time since registration that it doesn’t look brand new).

    Then they sell it to whoever will buy it. This could be content marketers who want to promote a product, nation-states who want to influence Western voters, etc.

    • mrtobo 4 minutes ago
      Any articles or docs in which I can learn more about this industry?
    • vuggamie 1 day ago
      I hope I never run across any of those sketchy websites that buy user accounts. Can you give me a list so I can add them to my blocked domains? Opsec is key.
    • sostupidlol 1 hour ago
      Lmao HN is not that important. Everyone knows this is an echo chamber. Only Bluesky and Kagi bullshit advertise here. Nothing good
  • nicetake 1 hour ago
    [dead]
  • AccountForSale 1 hour ago
    [dead]