7 ms·

I mix @realname and @pseudonym accounts. I'm generally pretty careful about what I post under my real name and less so under an alias. However, over time I dro

I mix @realname and @pseudonym accounts. I'm generally pretty careful about what I post under my real name and less so under an alias. However, over time I drop enough clues that people could figure my real identity with a little work. That leaves me with the worst of both worlds. It seems safest to assume that your identity is always tied to everything you do online.

can16358p 5y ago
I think with ML getting smarter and people posting (either with their identity or anonymously) more and more content, it will be trivial to crossmatch anonymously posted content to real identities by ML examining "styles" of text: from punctuation to sentence structure to vocabulary use, and it will have an accurate estimation of who that "anonymous" person is.
- kibwen 5y ago
  This would be pretty easy to counter by having a tool that would analyze any comment you post and strip all the identifying marks out of it; no punctuation other than periods, no complex or compound sentences, all words replaced by equivalents from the list of the most common thousand English words, all voices and tenses normalized, no paragraphs, no capitalization, etc.
  - bufordtwain 5y ago
    At which point, nobody would want to read it.
  - marvin 5y ago
    That's a bit of a nightmare for communication, though. Subtlety is a thing, both for nuance and clarity.
    - can16358p 5y ago
      There is another side of the coin though. If the "countering" software is smart enough to analyze the semantics and the meaning of the sentence (which I think will definitely have the ability to), it can easily convert it to an intermediate representation and create an actually gramatically correcy, good looking, easy to understand sentences. It can even improve the original text, making it more clear and anonymous-style.
  - can16358p 5y ago
    Yup. Then it would again boil back down to who forgets to run that to get caught/doxxed.
lmm 5y ago
I do this and accept that the cost of finding my real identity would be fairly low. I think most people do something similar. I don't want my employer searching "I work at $EMPLOYER_NAME" and finding me, but I don't mind if people paying attention can figure it out. I wouldn't post my address directly for any bored person to cause trouble with, but I don't particularly worry about people knowing where I live. Etc.

can16358p 5y ago

I think with ML getting smarter and people posting (either with their identity or anonymously) more and more content, it will be trivial to crossmatch anonymously posted content to real identities by ML examining "styles" of text: from punctuation to sentence structure to vocabulary use, and it will have an accurate estimation of who that "anonymous" person is.

kibwen 5y ago
This would be pretty easy to counter by having a tool that would analyze any comment you post and strip all the identifying marks out of it; no punctuation other than periods, no complex or compound sentences, all words replaced by equivalents from the list of the most common thousand English words, all voices and tenses normalized, no paragraphs, no capitalization, etc.
- bufordtwain 5y ago
  At which point, nobody would want to read it.
- marvin 5y ago
  That's a bit of a nightmare for communication, though. Subtlety is a thing, both for nuance and clarity.
  - can16358p 5y ago
    There is another side of the coin though. If the "countering" software is smart enough to analyze the semantics and the meaning of the sentence (which I think will definitely have the ability to), it can easily convert it to an intermediate representation and create an actually gramatically correcy, good looking, easy to understand sentences. It can even improve the original text, making it more clear and anonymous-style.
- can16358p 5y ago
  Yup. Then it would again boil back down to who forgets to run that to get caught/doxxed.

lmm 5y ago

I do this and accept that the cost of finding my real identity would be fairly low. I think most people do something similar. I don't want my employer searching "I work at $EMPLOYER_NAME" and finding me, but I don't mind if people paying attention can figure it out. I wouldn't post my address directly for any bored person to cause trouble with, but I don't particularly worry about people knowing where I live. Etc.