Y Combinator Co-founder Paul Graham: Most Replies May Be Default Folded
Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham stated that X has marked a large number of suspected AI-generated replies as potential spam. In one of his posts with 59 replies, 34 were hidden, mostly for this reason.
He expects this ratio to only increase, with most replies being default folded in the future. The post has approximately 156,000 views, about 1,500 likes, and over 300 replies. He has previously described the same phenomenon for several months: in March, he mentioned that reporting spam was too cumbersome and switched to muting; in April, he stated that he still manually blocked a few generated accounts per post, likening it to picking up trash on the street; in July, he explained that blocking a dissenting reply was due to the text being written by a model, not the viewpoint itself.
In May 2025, he asked whether filtering could solve the problem or make the model of public replies obsolete. In February 2026, he stated that cheerful, hollow generated replies are more dangerous than past public opinion attacks. In May, he noted that founder emails featured an unprecedented "hard news" style, which felt deceptive upon reading. He also expressed an open attitude towards YC portfolio companies using models, distinguishing between "using correctly" and ghostwriting.
The platform has already introduced measures like limiting reply chains to reduce bot spam. Graham co-founded Y Combinator with Jessica Livingston, previously created Viaweb, and sold it to Yahoo. His essays have long influenced Silicon Valley's views on writing and growth. YC was one of the early investors in OpenAI.
The public reply layer is shifting from "default visible discussion" to "default folded, click to expand." High-follower accounts become priority targets for generated content, transferring the cost of human reading to authors and platform classifiers.
In market mechanisms, the buyers are automated reply accounts seeking visibility, while the sellers are social platforms that fold layers using classifiers. The driving force is that the cost of generation approaches zero, while the cost of human reading remains unchanged. Traffic is shifting from expanded dialogues to folded inventory; authors reduce interaction, and bots lose display positions. Beneficiaries are filtering systems and paid verification tiers, while those under pressure are accounts that treat public replies as customer acquisition funnels and readers who still wish to encounter real people in the threads.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Paul Graham views writing ability as a filter for selecting entrepreneurs: during the Viaweb era, he relied on his own writing for products, and YC interviews assess whether founders can articulate their ideas clearly. He has invested in model companies but rejects emails and replies generated by models, effectively excluding "generated text" from the proof of capability. Over six months, he has transitioned from reporting and muting to accepting platform folding, acknowledging that human review cannot keep up with machine output. Among the 59 replies, 34 were hidden, translating personal feelings into a statistical ratio.
The capital path does not lie with him personally, but in the advertising and growth hacking budgets of the reply layer. Models with zero marginal cost turn comment sections into ad placements, while platforms recycle attention with spam labels. If X defaults to folding, paid visibility and follow-chain visibility will become new commodities. The motivation is to retain high-profile authors; the strategy is to transform the open square into layers that require unlocking. Many companies in the YC portfolio act as agents and growth tools, supplying these replies, leading to collisions between investors and their projects in the same comment section.
Analogous examples include Bayesian filtering for emails, comment closures during the blog era, and Discord changing public channels to post-review visibility. The former head of Reddit has also discussed how generated replies are more destructive than old-style flame wars. The industry is in a phase of shrinking public squares: it is not that content is decreasing, but that the default visible human content is diminishing.
This is a technological replacement. The replacement is the social protocol of "anyone can reply, replies are default visible." The mechanism is that when generation speed exceeds review speed, the platform can only hide first and review later; once most layers are hidden, real people will also be less willing to write the first reply. Folding becomes the new default, and public discussion degrades from a product feature to an option that requires additional clicks.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
With generation costs approaching zero, visibility rights become scarce.
Filters save the square but also turn it into layers that require unlocking.
Those who invest in models are the first to be unable to tolerate the pleasantries written by models.