5 ms·
As a counter example, I have been largely anonymous online and offline for awhile; yes, aware it is nearly impossible to be completely anonymous, that’s fine, l
by O__________O 4y ago
As a counter example, I have been largely anonymous online and offline for awhile; yes, aware it is nearly impossible to be completely anonymous, that’s fine, largely a “hobby” for me.
Very direct about it, and yes, some people completely shut you out once you tell them, but vast majority don’t; while my opinion, those who do aren’t people I am interested in knowing. Very similar prior to me being largely anonymous, people would ask me what I did, I would respond saying I did nothing, which at the time was true and did not feel the need to make something up. Oddly, discovered their response almost immediately told me a lot about who they are as a person; they might think I am: cool, on-the-run, lying, nomad, spy, wealthy, homeless, etc.
As for making personas, long ago I tried that, though now it to me feels like lying, especially in context of establishing long term relationships. That said, with personas I created, other than generic names, I would keep them true to myself, though never complete representations of myself. In doing so discovered that the variety of personas rarely played a factor in people engaging me, but it did appear to make a difference if I just happened to contact them randomly in close proximity to them having free time.
All and all, being anonymous really is not that hard. Not even something at this point I spend lot of time thinking about.
- erstorreyk 4y agohttps://stylometry.net/user?username=O__________O https://stylometry.net/user?username=O__________O
- O__________O 4y agoYep, like I said, I have very healthy expectations of how to maintain anonymity. Fortunately GPT will largely fix the issue of statistical analysis of variations in writing style between one writer and another. Stylometry been around a long time, as with all security, you have to know you threat model, and adjust accordingly. To my knowledge stylometry never made me less anonymous.
- jacooper 4y agoAssuming your GPT prompts aren't logged
- O__________O 4y agoPlenty of open source GPT projects, though if you’re at point of a local machine being trusted, likely have larger issues.
- mym1990 4y agoCan you give insight into how that top 10 chart demonstrates anonymity?
- O__________O 4y agoSure, feel free to point out how it makes me less anonymous.
- costco 4y agoNot saying these are necessarily all yours but the cluster of accounts O__________O, billme, saycheese, wonderous, endlessly, nxzero, v2hle0thslzrav2 are all in each others top 5 or so which is usually a sign of a good match and unless you are saying that you never revealed any identifying info in any of the several hundred comments you have made there is likely some loss of anonymity. If you used a VPN consistently on one account but didn't on one of your earlier accounts then the whole point of the VPN goes right out the window if someone say gets a subpoena.
- O__________O 4y agoOne of the advantages to being anonymous all the time is nothing is tied to an identity; not an IP address, not a physical address, etc.
- mym1990 4y agoI just really didn’t understand why that list was posted and then why you responded to it the way you did. Is it because it identified a common writing style that is shared by some others?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- buildsjets 4y agostylometry.net is hot garbage. Zero of the candidates that it identifies as being related to buildsjets are my actual alternate accounts. The DBCooper one is interesting, it sounds like a username I might use, but it's still not me.
- ghaff 4y agoStylometry is probably mostly useful if you have a small number of suspects with a decent-sized public corpus that you want to match against a book/set of blog posts etc. Even then it's just going to be statistical.
- saurik 4y agoFWIW, none of those are even scored even slightly high, so I don't think it is claiming something horribly incorrect.
- calderknight 4y agoAnd his actual alternative accounts may not have enough content to be included in the search.
- sbierwagen 4y agoOn the other hand, for me, both of the bolded accounts were indeed my alts.
- INTPenis 4y agoThey need to expand their dataset beyond HN, why would I have two HN accounts? Maybe if I had a public persona that mattered... but I mostly want to be anonymous once to avoid issues with my employer. But if they expanded their dataset to other sites like reddit I would be concerned.
- ghaff 4y agoFor me, it's that I generally default to public for professionally-related things. But every once in a great while I want to comment on something that is obviously about my present or a past employer if you know who I am. I could certainly just not do that but, given as I did, I didn't want it to be under my regular identity.
- Nadya 4y agoI mean you'll have to trust me when I say I don't - since if I did I would obviously claim that I don't - but I have a strong match with 3 users where I'm in their top 20. But I don't have an alternate HN account as I don't see any need for separate identities for the ideas I hold on HN. Where as if I want nuanced discussion on Reddit without someone trolling my post history and discounting anything I say because 4 years ago I once posted on a subreddit they don't approve of - I do need an alternate Reddit account. So I will admit to having at least one alternate Reddit account. Moreover - since Nadya is my "primary" pseudonym, I deliberately make it easy for people to find me across social platforms: https://nadyanay.me/identities https://nadyanay.me/identities Based on this list you can assume I am Nyu, Nadya, NadyaNayme, or Yuno in a number of places. Three of those names are common and so are commonly already taken by the time I create an account somewhere - so it isn't an exact science. For example - the account "yuno" also exists on HN but isn't me. If it were I'd have capitalized the "Y" and this account wouldn't exist. As far as I have been made aware - nobody has ever identified any of my other personas as belonging to me.
- Kiro 4y agoIn what situations do people you don't know ask you what you do where they actually care what you respond? And why not just say that you don't want to say? Among the online friends I have anonymity is the norm.
- boring_twenties 4y agoIn 99.9% of offline social situations, "what do you do" will be one of the first few questions asked. How much they actually care is an open question, but it is always more than zero in the very practical sense that if you refuse to respond the conversation will either end or shift to some combination of pressing for the answer and/or making fun of you. On the other hand, I used to be in the habit of responding with some kind of bullshit, ideally at least a little suspicious but just barely plausible enough to prevent the other party from calling you on it right away. This always resulted in much more fun conversations than talking about my actual work with strangers. Simply refusing to answer is just not socially acceptable outside of venues where anonymity is already the norm, e.g. online and IRL hacker cons.
- O__________O 4y agoYes, agree, your response reflects my experiences.
- Kiro 4y agoI missed that they meant in offline situations as well.
- canthaveitall 4y agoI do the same social experiments and this reflects my experiences too.
- eastof 4y agoI'm really curious about the offline piece. If you're at a conference or bar and someone asks your name, what do you say?
- O__________O 4y agoWhile little odd, it’s honestly my position that I don’t have a name; happy to explain, but that’s my position. If people are dead set on having a name to call me, just suggest they pick a name and that’s name we use; for example, today guy I have known a few weeks decided I was a “Bob” and we joked about it. It clearly limits options I have, for example, I don’t drive, but for whatever reason it’s hobby I enjoy, one of the few I have kept up with. One of reason currently I continue to remain anonymous is it is an easy way to engage people on a topic that I sincerely believe is important, that being the right to privacy.
- spiderice 4y agoUnfortunately "the guy who claims he doesn't have a name" is WAY more identifying than just giving a generic name. Doesn't sound to me like you're anonymous at all. This makes me think of the Nate Bargatze bit about the guy with two thumbs on one hand: https://youtu.be/Hd31dbJvGaU https://youtu.be/Hd31dbJvGaU
- O__________O 4y agoYes, you’re right that people remember me, but being rememberable to me does not make me identifiable; unlike the example you provided of having two thumbs on one hand, which clearly is an identifiable visible unique physical trait.
- lioeters 4y agoThat's very interesting. I for one am intrigued by the idea, and will continue thinking about it for sure. Well done, nameless one!