DIT was misnamed... Dead Internet Prophecy would have been a better term, something that hadn't happened yet, but will come true in the future.

It was misnamed because (centralised sites != internet).

Lie down with social media dogs, get up with fleas.

Related, a real human on HN is limited to 5 comments per 6 hours, while bad actors simply need to create hundreds of accounts to avoid this limit.

> Related, a real human on HN is limited to 5 comments per 6 hours, while bad actors simply need to create hundreds of accounts to avoid this limit.

I don't think that's true. I think that's an anti-abuse mode some accounts fall into.

I have always assumed it's sort of an algorithm that manages this, some combination of account duration, "points", etc..

Or just recent activity. I think I've seen it happen to accounts that were digging in their heels and vigorously defending some wrong/incorrect/unpopular point they made upthread. Then all the sudden they're mentioning the post limit and editing posts to reply. I'm guessing it's a combination of high (recent) post volume and down-votes that triggers it.

I think there are two things at play here. One is when you're rate limited because dang limited you because you're violating the site guidelines. It's a less drastic step than all your posts showing up as dead.

Second is, the further you are "to the right" in a discussion - the more parents you have to go through to get to a top-level comment - I thing you eventually get to a delay there, just to stop threads from marching off to infinity with two people (who absolutely will not stop and will not agree, or even agree to disagree) going on forever. I'm not sure what the indent level is that triggers this, but I would expect some sort of exponential backoff.

It's part of the philosophy of HN. Arguments that are just people repeating the same points back and forth aren't interesting or enlightening.

Too fast is more than 5 posts or comments every 6 hours. I think it's a rolling window.

> Too fast is more than 5 posts or comments every 6 hours. I think it's a rolling window.

No it isn't. Today I posted more than that (I think 9 comments in an hour or two), partially to test if that claim was true. I ran into no limits.

Something has to happen to trigger the rate limit to be applied to an account.

It's even tougher for some accounts, too.