Hacker News Reader

Yes they are a thing of the past. Whenever I run into them I smile for nostalgia and inevitably run into examples of why they are a thing of the past…

1. low utilization among real readers

2. high abuse by spammers

3. the few hold out site that keep comments on articles are politicized garbage of very little real value and make me wonder why I continue to visit their site at all, e.g. slashdot

View on HN

also forums were notorious for this, there was a program called xRumer or something that used to mass spam, solve captchas on blogs, forums to engage in short term SERP boosts and sell viagras.

I sometimes think someone has left that program running since back then because the spam comments I have seen - they all look the same from 15 years ago.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com