I Saw Your HN Comment

A longtime Hacker News commenter identified as Josh has flagged a shift in his inbound email from substantive replies to AI-generated cold pitches, after reviewing messages tied to his posts and comments dating back to 2013. He said large language models now let senders craft convincing, personalized emails referencing a specific comment, often opening with a compliment and an open-ended question rather than disclosing a commercial motive. The pattern has become an "amplification attack," he wrote, because a two- or three-sentence question can prompt him to write multiple paragraphs in reply, only to receive a product pitch in return. He cited real pivot lines including "That's close to what I'm building" and "Would you have 15 min next week?" The shift matters because the same dynamic is playing out across developer and professional communities where public email addresses and open comment threads have long driven hiring, partnerships and serendipitous connections. He has begun sending short replies first and engaging fully only if no pitch follows, and said he will avoid products advertised to him through what he called deceptive "growth hacking."