Thread

1. jonty · 1790613966 · focus · HN ↗

   Back in ~2001 I ran a fairly popular blog commenting system - back then most blogs didn't have built-in comments, so I offered javascript embeds to add them to posts.

   One day performance started to go down rapidly, and within a few days my host got in touch about unusual CPU usage.

   I tracked it down to a series of random blogger.com blog posts with colossal comment threads measuring in the thousands. Each post only got comments for a single day, and all of the comments were in Japanese. The blog owners seemed very confused.

   Turns out Japanese schoolkids figured this trick out 25 years ago.

   1. port11 · 1790676991 · focus · HN ↗

      But surely, if we ask everyone to prove they’re at least 18, kids won’t find any ways to do anything the government(s) don’t like.

      1. Clamchop · 1790700118 · focus · HN ↗

         They will of course but I don't think kids talking to each other was ever the objection to social media. Very arguably, kids coming together in these ad-hoc online spaces may very well be safer than mainstream social media, whether your complaint with it is advertising or the algorithm or adult content or child predators.

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