Ask HN: Hacker News users called me clanker twice, I am human though
by Imustaskforhelp | 2026-01-15 12:48:01+00:00
I spend more time than I would love to admit on hackernews.

Recently, in 2026, something has extremely changed. The focus on politics and bots and botting and propaganda and accusations and a lot of thing. Some people say it was before but I don't know how to feel about that because i learnt so many interesting things from HN in 2025

So firstly someone decided to call me clanker for no apparent reason (https://files.catbox.moe/5yp9qo.png) and their comment got flagged and my response couldn't be seen

Then I was insanely frustrated. I try to be more calm usually because one day If I ever create a company, I want HN community to reflect how my behaviour was and also I don't usually see the points on being mad but today I digress and I hope that's okay.

For context I am a 17 year old who joined HN in 2024

https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=46628858&goto=threads%3Fid%3Dlovich%2346628858

Now they mention that my account is post LLM and I try to show my frustration in that but what does that mean for youngsters like me? Will we never be able to get reputation as a human being.

I don't even know how to proven we are human or not.

The botting and flagging and propaganda problem in HN has been insane these past couple of days. I posted a post about How US freezes visa for 75 days and that gets flagged too perhaps by bots too

So in a way, I got screwed by both sides. What reasons are for me to stay here, I am just deeply upset about this situation because i genuinely beleive in a trust based economy. After AI the one thing people lost is trust and I thought that my comments in HN verify my authenticity, that I care about some projects deeply to my heart and this account was a reflection of that.

I love small web, small businesses. I want to open it some day too. I try to help people when I can on hackernews through the open source projects I know of on github. I wouldn't consider myself an extreme programmer and I still vibe code usually for prototyping but I am still in High school and I have thoughts about skipping AI or extremely curbing its use once I get into college

I genuinely used to think that surely there must be one college who would like a guy like me from my hobbies and such and I could get referral into decent university through this about the fact that I have commented some deep things on Hackernews.

I could've created my own blog and in fact some of my comments are longer than people's blogs but I didn't end up doing because i wanted genuine feedback and my posts just never gained traction and HN comments got more eyeballs and even though I didn't earn anything from it, it helped give more perspective and nuance and that's all I want because I want to grow as a person.

I must ask for help man, Please fix this community's botting and distrust possibility if not for the current state, atleast for the future like us youngsters please.

have a nice day everybody & (Edit: but I hope that HN can fix itself from this botting problem, its one of the few communities which is "literally me" and I am literally you. I love most things about HN, from the open source projects recommendations and discussions to showcasing cool projects and cool blogs and ideas all while we can have a place to comment about it respectfully and some of the people here are heavily experienced so you get to learn. But alas, the past few days have been a rough experience personally on HN)