Tell HN: Stop emailing HN users with deceptive AI spam

8 points by neilv 3 hours ago

Lately, I've been getting many emails that appear to be from a fellow human HN user who saw something you said on HN, and was inspired to reach out about joining their company.

There's usually a faint whiff of AI, though they usually pick a personal detail of yours to mention (to make it not look like pre-AI spam), and sometimes are even sent from the email address of someone listed as a founder on a startup's web site. There's no indication that this is automated, by AI or otherwise.

If you respond, you find it's either:

(1) AI-powered spamming, to generate hiring leads for them to look at, for the first time, and the initial message suggesting a thoughtful connection was deceptive (making it no better than the worst LinkedIn keyword spammer's outreaches that everyone hates, just more deceptive); or

(2) There is no such job like they said, and they are actually just collecting resumes to bootstrap or growth-hack their AI recruiter service.

Both of these are dishonest, and are wasting the attention of those of us job hunting, while our field is going through times that are rough for most.

It may also mean that the person is less likely to respond to a genuine message, because the AI spammer's dishonesty has soiled one of the last ways by which we genuinely reach out.

So, to the people doing this...

Please consider that, although it might be ethically no different than a number of other dishonest things that lucrative tech startups have done in the past and are currently doing, you are actively taking the initiative to make the world that much worse.

Also, not that it makes any ethical difference, but you're doing it to people in your own field, perhaps very similar to yourself. Ideally, anyone holding a position of leadership would have ethics and empathy for others. Having zero empathy, even that close to home, isn't a good sign.