4 ms·
>Presumably now people will routinely search for alt accounts of any HN commenter and bring what they find into the discussion. First, only obsessive or crazy
by kbelder 4y ago
>Presumably now people will routinely search for alt accounts of any HN commenter and bring what they find into the discussion.
First, only obsessive or crazy people will do that, or maybe journalists. It'll show up occasionally in discussions, but I don't think it'll be 'routine', and I think most commenters will avoid subthreads with those sorts of shenanigans.
But more importantly, these static analysis tools are only probabilistic. They find likely matches, but in most cases there'll be a factor of plausible deniability.
- naruvimama 4y ago
- FreakLegion 4y agoPlausible deniability and then some. The system doesn't predict alts, just gives a list of nearest matches and highlights the entries that are symmetrical within the number of matches given. I have no alts but still get the same number of "predictions" as sillysaurusx, who says he's had 10-ish. So the accuracy of any given prediction is going to be by definition tiny at 19 per user. After all, most users have no or few alts in the first place. sillysaurusx is an extreme example, and even that leaves overall accuracy at 50-60%. Across all users I'd be shocked if it was better than 2 in 19. Probably it's < 1.