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Ah yes... I'm Skimmington Harborough, Esq., I come from a family that made its fortune in philanthropy generations ago. This seems like a pretty straightforwar

Ah yes... I'm Skimmington Harborough, Esq., I come from a family that made its fortune in philanthropy generations ago. This seems like a pretty straightforward mechanism for covert operatives, to generate a believable (and memorizable) cover that pulls attention away and maintains coherence. That said, as someone who prizes ethical behavior, it's not possible to practice this and remain wholly honest without some sort of ethical loophole like "character work for entertainment only". A persona requires misrepresentation, which is not the same as de facto anonymity. So, while I love the write-up, I don't think it's saying what they think it's saying.

bilbo0s 4y ago
All of what you say is true. But it's even worse than that. A persona won't even confer anonymity these days. So now you're dishonest and attributable.
- RajT88 4y ago
  Indeed. Despite your best efforts, they know that Sir Olivier Stubbingwicke lives at the same address as Bill Swerski, who pays for the Comcast internet. Similarly, very few people are unaware that XFinity is the pseudonym for Comcast.
  - hyperdimension 4y ago
    I know I'm running with the off-topic comment, but I like to point that out whenever possible. Companies know that if they just change their name, they lose any bad connotations they had with the previous name. Comcast changed the name of its Internet service to "Comcast Xfinity" for a few years, then silently dropped the "Comcast" at one point. Spectrum is also Charter, and Altria is Phillip Morris. It's crappy that it actually works most of the time, so I like to point it out to try to counteract that.
    - chaboud 4y ago
      That is so.... meta...
O__________O 4y ago
Agree, it’s extremely toxic to real relationships. In some situations, it’s even illegal to do so depending on the context and representations made. Pretexting as a social engineering method is basically same thing: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretexting https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretexting
geph2021 4y ago
made its fortune in philanthropy Already sounds dubious to me. Don't you need a fortune before you go into philanthropy? Making a fortune in philanthropy sounds like embezzlement.
- splitstud 4y ago
  Hence the name Skimmington
  - geph2021 4y ago
    Haha! I actually missed that... well done.
  - neogodless 4y ago
    No relation to Skimmington Harbordough?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
xpe 4y ago
It is not categorically imperative to never lie nor misrepresent. The opposite is true. There are some situations where "standard" ethical principles (don't lie, don't kill) are unethical. If left with no alternative, lethal self-defense is not just acceptable, but is morally necessary. An exception to the exception might exist if your attacker is acting justly, but that takes it to another level of analysis.
- haswell 4y ago
  The existence of those opposites does not justify a general case though, i.e. those limited exceptions are by definition limited.
3pt14159 4y ago
I was an NOC Agent for Canada then I got married. There's so much data out there, nothing is easy with creating a false persona. Your eyes, walk, fingerprints, etc. It's possible in the short run, but you're leaking a lot of data doing it. My MO when I really didn't want to end up Googleable was to just give my real first name and leave it at that even if people pressed. Edit: The reason is simple. If someone gives a false name and you know their real one then you're much more certain that they're trying to conceal their identity. So the downside is real, even if it is practical in some circumstances.
- RealityVoid 4y ago
  Fascinating. How long were you a NOC for? I guess your spouse did not know of it while she was your GF. Did it impact your life negatively, having to maintain secrecy? You must have been for quite a while, I understand a long time passes before agents are fully functional.
  - 3pt14159 4y ago
    Well, I'm allowed to talk about it publicly but I still would like to default to undersharing. It was a little over five years. Long enough. My spouse and I got married very quickly after meeting and yes the impact on one's life is real, but so is the upside and I find few online that talk about it. The upside is real. You see the extremes of humanity and it clarifies the importance of ethics in life.
    - RealityVoid 4y ago
      Perfectly understandable, I did not want to pry but found it fascinating and could not help myself.
      - 3pt14159 4y ago
        No problem at all. If we were at a bar I'd say more, but with online stuff the safety margins are tighter because every word is picked over by everyone. It's not just states. There are a lot of mentally ill people out there. That said, I think others should consider working in this field. The impact is real and I think many HNers would make good agents and officers. So I'm starting to talk about it online and I'm reworking my website and other things. Think of it as continued public service. We (Nato and friends) need good people doing this work. One thing I should have mentioned is that I'm still working in this area, just not directly for the Canadian government any longer.
RealityVoid 4y ago
I used to think lying wash wholly inethical. But I don't think this anymore. Lying is somethimes the ethical thing to do. I believe the goal matters.
rt4mn 4y ago
> That said, as someone who prizes ethical behavior, it's not possible to practice this and remain wholly honest without some sort of ethical loophole The primary "ethical loophole" here is that there is no viable ethical alternative. Something can not be immoral if it is the best of a series of bad options, and if you want to exsist in the world and protect your privacy, the only real option is to create a persona. There is literally no other option that I have been able to find that both protects your privacy and also does not require you to sequester yourself from humanity entirely. Pure anonymity bars you from the following activities: joining a social group, signing up for some longish term business relationship (hiring a contracter, signing up for a service), engaging in the political process, holding a job, and probably more that I cant think of. You simply wont be able to do any of those things if you tried to give your name as "chaboud" or "rt4mn". The best option if you care about your privacy, in those scenarios, is to use a nickname/alias/persona, and be honest and say "no its not" in the vanishingly rare case where you are asked directly whether or not that's the same name you have your birth certificate.
- JackFr 4y ago
  > Pure anonymity bars you from the following activities: joining a social group, signing up for some longish term business relationship (hiring a contracter, signing up for a service), engaging in the political process, holding a job, and probably more that I cant think of. Why do you believe that’s your right? You have the right to be left alone, but in all the examples you offer you are explicitly not minding your own business. Rather there should be an expectation of reciprocity with respect to identity.
  - hgsgm 4y ago
    Do you have that reciprocity with every corporation you engage with? I bet not. They all hide behind personas.
- akerl_ 4y ago
  > Something can not be immoral if it is the best of a series of bad options You’re presenting this as if it’s a fact, but it doesn’t seem like it is. If for no other reason that it relies on a shared understanding of what’s “best” and what makes options “bad”. You could justify some pretty horrible decisions if you’re holding that as an axiom.
tsumnia 4y ago
> That said, as someone who prizes ethical behavior, it's not possible to practice this and remain wholly honest without some sort of ethical loophole like "character work for entertainment only". A persona requires misrepresentation, which is not the same as de facto anonymity. I don't think the persona needs to be completely falsified. Rather, you consider which topics you engage in on a given account. For example I consider "tsumnia" to be unofficial/official "professional" username - while I don't explicitly say my name, it'd take you looking at my profile to know exactly who I am. On the other hand, I have my hobby/nerdy username on Reddit for when I want to talk about the latest Last of Us episodes. Same person, but different aspects of my personality are on display. Its not that the other one is a troll or anything, just one name to talk about deliberate practice in CS education in one thread and then another to make jokes about video games.
- ttrefa 4y ago
  Do you try to keep them separate in the sense of not being connectable? That could be hard, as writing style is a pretty strong give-away (as recently demonstrated just here on HN where somebody wrote a very simple tool to detect alt accounts). It's ok if you don't. I'm just wondering if it's even worth trying. The persona strategy could be worthwhile for simple tracking purposes, but for somebody actually trying, it shouldn't be hard to link all your personas, given enough data. Or maybe one should avoid posting with real name altogether, anywhere. That includes though carreer-building blog posts or public documentation, even written in a professional setting where it could be hard to avoid.
  - tsumnia 4y ago
    > Do you try to keep them separate in the sense of not being connectable? I think part of the persona creates different writing styles - my other account(s) have never been rated close to each other. For Reddit, my other account is just my default. I only switch over to tsumnia for /r/professors, or other coding-related subreddits these days. Reddit Enhancement Suite helps out nicely for that. My other account(s) never really write enough to generate enough substance for comparison I think and never interact with each other (not replying to myself or something silly like that). Sure its possible, its just... not something I've had to worry about. tsumnia writes long winded responses and my other accounts... don't. If anything I'd be impressed and nerd out on the math if someone could connect the accounts. > it shouldn't be hard to link all your personas, given enough data I'm not some big name that I'd really need to worry about that. Even if I became one, like I mentioned I'm not trolling, flaming, or being obscene in the other accounts, just writing about my hobbies. Things I openly admit to in real life, just don't write about. It may be harder if an account is some super personal stuff like sexual orientation / gender identity, but I don't do any of that. Even if they did impact me, those fall into things I just don't bring up on the internet. Likewise, I imagine it may be harder for women that are dealing with online stalkers, but again, that hasn't been something I've had to deal with. Plus, any organization that REALLY wanted to find me can simply reverse lookup the account IP addresses anyway. If I think an account that I want to remain private has gonna a bit too personal, I simply retire the account name. It can be annoying if account karma/points/whatever is "important", but... eh... I made plenty of DnD characters over the years, I can start using another character's name or something with a pun. Internet points only limit what I can and can't do on a site, nothing else. > maybe one should avoid posting with real name altogether, anywhere. That's always an option. Since I used tsumnia for so long, I sort of just DECIDED to let it be public. I had more or less doxxed myself (or narrowed down who tsumnia could be) before I openly said it was me. No different than a YouTuber doing a face reveal, except I don't have millions of fans. Instead of retiring tsumnia, I acknowledged it and created a new one that doesn't connect to me. I imagine that's how lots of usernames start - being anonymous but occasionally they drop a nugget of personal information. Those accrue over time and boom, its an alias. I'm a little more cautious to drop personal information on the other accounts, but I think its because I can always use tsumnia for those situations.
OkayPhysicist 4y ago
Is lying in-of-itself unethical? I'd be curious to probe a framework that thinks it is, while not holding that axiomatically. As someone who leans heavily into consequentialism, I can think of plenty of times lying can lead to a net positive for everyone. Likewise, there are harmful truths that should be suppressed. That suggests to me that lying is, in-of-itself, amoral. The effect of the lie (or the intent, if you swing that way) determines whether it's ethical or not. Who is harmed by your assuming a fabricated identity? For the vast majority of people, who exactly you are matter little. So it's hard to suggest they are harmed by having an incorrect model of you. It may be manipulative to those trying to piece together your identity, but being doxxed can and often does lead to harm befalling your person, so your lies against them can be plainly justified under self-defense.
- bobkazamakis 4y ago
  You seem pretty confident in a subjective opinion.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    We're having a normative discussion and we have our own beliefs. It's to be expected.
  - OkayPhysicist 4y ago
    It would make little sense not to be confident in a subjective opinion. As the sole arbiter of truth concerning my subjective experience, it would be absurd to waffle about it.
- altruios 4y ago
  There are frameworks that have lying as axiomatically evil. But to be consistent - a painful truth must be preferable to a rewarding lie. To live a lie free life is to invite pain, and to view that pain as both functional and necessary - it is not for the weak to try.
- toolz 4y ago
  I agree with this line of thinking. Especially the focus on effect. If your persona is made with the pure intent of anonymity and you make an ordinary persona whose abilities aren't exaggerated and could easily be swapped with your own persona without much impact on the people you converse with, then I don't think any harm is being done and you're merely keeping your anonymity while still presenting your authentic abilities and personality to some online community.
rzzzt 4y ago
> This seems like a pretty straightforward mechanism for covert operatives, to generate a believable (and memorizable) cover I think the official term is "legend" for this one. This occasionally comes up in spy movies and I also get some search results for it.
vehemenz 4y ago
Before it was de rigeur to use real names on the Internet, most of us used personas that were informed by our handles. It's unusual—I might even say unethical, if moral realism were coherent—to insist on real names as a matter of honesty given that real names disproportionately benefit the powerful. The powerless cannot use their real names on the Internet because often there are real world consequences.
- chaboud 4y ago
  I don't insist on this (or even suggest it) for others (I'm an old BBS'er), but I do generally use my real name on the internet.
RobotToaster 4y ago
Is it a lie to choose a name to go by at different times? Why should you always have to use the name your parents gave you. Some people are even better known by their nom de plume than their real name, from Mark Twain to Lenin. In many cases the law even protects the right for artists to use a pseudonym under artist's moral rights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights
jareklupinski 4y ago
Rusty Shackleford, pleased to meet ya https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okN4P2l1QCk&t=45s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okN4P2l1QCk&t=45s
didgetmaster 4y ago
Am I being unethical when I tell the medicare supplemental insurance salesman from India that I am only 22 years old (while hoping to be taken off their list of potential customers) when he asks me my age?
kerpotgh 4y ago
There is no ethical issue here. The companies asking for your identity generally don’t need it and providing them with a persona could be argued is the more ethical route given the implications it has on privacy and mass surveillance.
- nobody9999 4y ago
  >There is no ethical issue here. The companies asking for your identity generally don’t need it and providing them with a persona could be argued is the more ethical route given the implications it has on privacy and mass surveillance. I'd say, to quote a bad movie[0] that "the only winning move is not to play." Giving those entities even a fake persona will negatively impact your privacy over the medium to long term. The better solution is for folks to vote with their feet and refuse to use such entities. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be a popular choice, but that doesn't mean it isn't the right one. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames
daniel-grigg 4y ago
People practice personas everyday of their lives, the only difference in the post is the explicit labelling of them. The avatar I present here is different to how I behave in person, or how I engage at work, my friends, my family.
Taywee 4y ago
Maybe I'm from a different era, but I still think that the best default position is that anything somebody has listed about themselves online may be a work of fiction that we shouldn't be expected to take at face value in most contexts. If encryption is not immoral, encrypting your personal information is also not immoral, even if you also want plausible deniability. Privacy is not unethical. If a persona and pseudonym is the best route to that, you aren't hurting anybody. As a person who prizes the idea that what we say and do are more important than who we are, I disagree that honesty and ethics always align. If some dishonesty maximizes peoples' actual wellbeing, then that dishonestly is probably actually more ethical than the honesty that compromises and hurts people for no gain other than ideological purity.
- ljm 4y ago
  I’m not sure how you’re pulling encryption into this argument. You can be honest or dishonest and it will be encrypted and decrypted all the same. Your second argument to me doesn’t follow. You are saying what you say and do is more important than what you value, I think, but you are also saying that what you say and do are not important so you can be dishonest. My conclusion is that you prize winning over being ethical. Just think of all the other cases where honesty and ethics have been put on the back burner on the basis that you think your thing is more important; a lot of them legal.
  - Taywee 4y ago
    You use an alias or a persona to mask your identity, just as you use encryption to mask information. Keeping something intentionally hidden, either via an alias or encryption, is not dishonest nor unethical. I do not prize winning. I'm not sure who is "winning" or "losing" when I decide to not publish my name. I'll note that I use my real name and attach my real identity to lots of things. I just don't agree that people who choose to mask their identity through a plausible persona are somehow walking an ethical tightrope. They are entitled to use a fake name.
- 1659447091 4y ago
  > As a person who prizes the idea that what we say and do are more important than who we are I am not sure I follow - what we say and do is who we are, how could it be otherwise?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
link_108 4y ago
"A persona requires misrepresentation, which is not the same as de facto anonymity." I don't this this is correct, as a persona can accurately represent you, its just a persona. If you want to continue to be anonymous with a persona that represents you, I think differential privacy could help in this situation.
chaosharmonic 4y ago
Yeahhhhhh, not that there aren't totally valid reasons to opt for pseudonyms, but I also see a lot of overlap here with the Lorenzo Von Matterhorn.
imgabe 4y ago
You have no ethical obligation to provide accurate personal information to an untrusted party.
Kim_Bruning 4y ago
To lie is to make an untrue statement with the intent to deceive. In a play, actors make untrue[1] statements, but the audience is in on it, so there is no intent to deceive, and indeed no one ends up deceived. Some professions like police officers, firefighters, doctors, military officers, etc might wear uniforms/special clothing and act in a certain way too. No one actually believes that you change into a different person when you put on a uniform, so again no deception takes place. Back in the 90's it was simply assumed everyone used a pseudonymous persona [2], so again no intent and no deception. Many people still use pseudonymous personas to this day! The Author of this article DOES take things a bit far. I'd definitely want to be a bit careful recommending their approach. If you want your persona to interact with the real world, then all the aspects relevant to the interaction do need to be true. For example: depending on context, it may or may not be fine to have a persona who claims to be university professor, but if you start falsely using that credential for real world gain, you may have crossed a line. [3] So in the end I think it's ethically ok to use personas, provided there is no intent to deceive. -- [1] Arguably: untrue in this world, but perhaps true in the world of the play? [2] "on the internet, no one knows if you're a dog" [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essjay_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essjay_controversy
User23 4y ago
The easy out is that you make it eminently clear that the persona is a fictitious character. At that point it becomes much like any other performer who wears a costume and uses a stage name.
sorry_outta_gas 4y ago
thats a fucking lie
coryfklein 4y ago
Wait how is this even controversial. We have decades, perhaps centuries, of precedent in liberal democracy of writing under pseudonyms. Since nearly your entire presence online is via your writing, I don’t see how it could possibly be ethically wrong to write online under a pseudonym. If having a fake image in addition to your name bothers you then just use a blank avatar or something. The whole point of pseudonyms has been that a) your work should stand for itself and not be impacted by your identity and b) to protect individuals. Can someone use pseudonyms to perform unethical or fraudulent activity, of course. But the pseudonym itself is not unethical.
FrontierPsych 4y ago
>That said, as someone who prizes ethical behavior, it's not possible to practice this and remain wholly honest Yes, I get it. When I go for job interviews, they ask me what my weaknesses are, I say that I fuck off every once in a while, that I will sometimes badmouth the company and my boss after I leave the company. That sometimes I go to the company bathroom and masterbate to relieve stress. That I don't really like my mother because she is a meth addict all her life even when she was pregnant with me so when I was in her womb, I was basically on meth, too, and it really fucked up my mental capacities and so sometimes I go off in an irrational manner and maybe will start yelling at people. I belch and fart a lot, too and that usually upsets co-workers. I go on and on like this for about 20 minutes on all my weaknesses, because I want to make sure that I completely answer their question in an ethical manner, because I don't lie by ommission. They didn't ask me what my "strengths disguesed as a weakness" were, or how to "spin it by giving the best picture of myself" and "market myself" to them. It's the same with women when they ask about me. I say that I fart and burp a lot as mentioned above. They are not regular farts but real stench bombs. I also pick my nose a lot in public and then eat it but not when people can see. So far, I can't get a job for the last 15 years despite my interviewing 80-100 interviews per year. And no girlfriend. But at least I can be internally happy because I'm ethical and honest and never lie, and give the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

bilbo0s 4y ago

All of what you say is true. But it's even worse than that. A persona won't even confer anonymity these days. So now you're dishonest and attributable.

RajT88 4y ago
Indeed. Despite your best efforts, they know that Sir Olivier Stubbingwicke lives at the same address as Bill Swerski, who pays for the Comcast internet. Similarly, very few people are unaware that XFinity is the pseudonym for Comcast.
- hyperdimension 4y ago
  I know I'm running with the off-topic comment, but I like to point that out whenever possible. Companies know that if they just change their name, they lose any bad connotations they had with the previous name. Comcast changed the name of its Internet service to "Comcast Xfinity" for a few years, then silently dropped the "Comcast" at one point. Spectrum is also Charter, and Altria is Phillip Morris. It's crappy that it actually works most of the time, so I like to point it out to try to counteract that.
  - chaboud 4y ago
    That is so.... meta...

O__________O 4y ago

Agree, it’s extremely toxic to real relationships. In some situations, it’s even illegal to do so depending on the context and representations made. Pretexting as a social engineering method is basically same thing: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretexting https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretexting

geph2021 4y ago

made its fortune in philanthropy Already sounds dubious to me. Don't you need a fortune before you go into philanthropy? Making a fortune in philanthropy sounds like embezzlement.

splitstud 4y ago
Hence the name Skimmington
- geph2021 4y ago
  Haha! I actually missed that... well done.
- neogodless 4y ago
  No relation to Skimmington Harbordough?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

xpe 4y ago

It is not categorically imperative to never lie nor misrepresent. The opposite is true. There are some situations where "standard" ethical principles (don't lie, don't kill) are unethical. If left with no alternative, lethal self-defense is not just acceptable, but is morally necessary. An exception to the exception might exist if your attacker is acting justly, but that takes it to another level of analysis.

haswell 4y ago
The existence of those opposites does not justify a general case though, i.e. those limited exceptions are by definition limited.

3pt14159 4y ago

I was an NOC Agent for Canada then I got married. There's so much data out there, nothing is easy with creating a false persona. Your eyes, walk, fingerprints, etc. It's possible in the short run, but you're leaking a lot of data doing it. My MO when I really didn't want to end up Googleable was to just give my real first name and leave it at that even if people pressed. Edit: The reason is simple. If someone gives a false name and you know their real one then you're much more certain that they're trying to conceal their identity. So the downside is real, even if it is practical in some circumstances.

RealityVoid 4y ago
Fascinating. How long were you a NOC for? I guess your spouse did not know of it while she was your GF. Did it impact your life negatively, having to maintain secrecy? You must have been for quite a while, I understand a long time passes before agents are fully functional.
- 3pt14159 4y ago
  Well, I'm allowed to talk about it publicly but I still would like to default to undersharing. It was a little over five years. Long enough. My spouse and I got married very quickly after meeting and yes the impact on one's life is real, but so is the upside and I find few online that talk about it. The upside is real. You see the extremes of humanity and it clarifies the importance of ethics in life.
  - RealityVoid 4y ago
    Perfectly understandable, I did not want to pry but found it fascinating and could not help myself.
    - 3pt14159 4y ago
      No problem at all. If we were at a bar I'd say more, but with online stuff the safety margins are tighter because every word is picked over by everyone. It's not just states. There are a lot of mentally ill people out there. That said, I think others should consider working in this field. The impact is real and I think many HNers would make good agents and officers. So I'm starting to talk about it online and I'm reworking my website and other things. Think of it as continued public service. We (Nato and friends) need good people doing this work. One thing I should have mentioned is that I'm still working in this area, just not directly for the Canadian government any longer.

RealityVoid 4y ago

I used to think lying wash wholly inethical. But I don't think this anymore. Lying is somethimes the ethical thing to do. I believe the goal matters.

rt4mn 4y ago

> That said, as someone who prizes ethical behavior, it's not possible to practice this and remain wholly honest without some sort of ethical loophole The primary "ethical loophole" here is that there is no viable ethical alternative. Something can not be immoral if it is the best of a series of bad options, and if you want to exsist in the world and protect your privacy, the only real option is to create a persona. There is literally no other option that I have been able to find that both protects your privacy and also does not require you to sequester yourself from humanity entirely. Pure anonymity bars you from the following activities: joining a social group, signing up for some longish term business relationship (hiring a contracter, signing up for a service), engaging in the political process, holding a job, and probably more that I cant think of. You simply wont be able to do any of those things if you tried to give your name as "chaboud" or "rt4mn". The best option if you care about your privacy, in those scenarios, is to use a nickname/alias/persona, and be honest and say "no its not" in the vanishingly rare case where you are asked directly whether or not that's the same name you have your birth certificate.

JackFr 4y ago
> Pure anonymity bars you from the following activities: joining a social group, signing up for some longish term business relationship (hiring a contracter, signing up for a service), engaging in the political process, holding a job, and probably more that I cant think of. Why do you believe that’s your right? You have the right to be left alone, but in all the examples you offer you are explicitly not minding your own business. Rather there should be an expectation of reciprocity with respect to identity.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  Do you have that reciprocity with every corporation you engage with? I bet not. They all hide behind personas.
akerl_ 4y ago
> Something can not be immoral if it is the best of a series of bad options You’re presenting this as if it’s a fact, but it doesn’t seem like it is. If for no other reason that it relies on a shared understanding of what’s “best” and what makes options “bad”. You could justify some pretty horrible decisions if you’re holding that as an axiom.

tsumnia 4y ago

> That said, as someone who prizes ethical behavior, it's not possible to practice this and remain wholly honest without some sort of ethical loophole like "character work for entertainment only". A persona requires misrepresentation, which is not the same as de facto anonymity. I don't think the persona needs to be completely falsified. Rather, you consider which topics you engage in on a given account. For example I consider "tsumnia" to be unofficial/official "professional" username - while I don't explicitly say my name, it'd take you looking at my profile to know exactly who I am. On the other hand, I have my hobby/nerdy username on Reddit for when I want to talk about the latest Last of Us episodes. Same person, but different aspects of my personality are on display. Its not that the other one is a troll or anything, just one name to talk about deliberate practice in CS education in one thread and then another to make jokes about video games.

ttrefa 4y ago
Do you try to keep them separate in the sense of not being connectable? That could be hard, as writing style is a pretty strong give-away (as recently demonstrated just here on HN where somebody wrote a very simple tool to detect alt accounts). It's ok if you don't. I'm just wondering if it's even worth trying. The persona strategy could be worthwhile for simple tracking purposes, but for somebody actually trying, it shouldn't be hard to link all your personas, given enough data. Or maybe one should avoid posting with real name altogether, anywhere. That includes though carreer-building blog posts or public documentation, even written in a professional setting where it could be hard to avoid.
- tsumnia 4y ago
  > Do you try to keep them separate in the sense of not being connectable? I think part of the persona creates different writing styles - my other account(s) have never been rated close to each other. For Reddit, my other account is just my default. I only switch over to tsumnia for /r/professors, or other coding-related subreddits these days. Reddit Enhancement Suite helps out nicely for that. My other account(s) never really write enough to generate enough substance for comparison I think and never interact with each other (not replying to myself or something silly like that). Sure its possible, its just... not something I've had to worry about. tsumnia writes long winded responses and my other accounts... don't. If anything I'd be impressed and nerd out on the math if someone could connect the accounts. > it shouldn't be hard to link all your personas, given enough data I'm not some big name that I'd really need to worry about that. Even if I became one, like I mentioned I'm not trolling, flaming, or being obscene in the other accounts, just writing about my hobbies. Things I openly admit to in real life, just don't write about. It may be harder if an account is some super personal stuff like sexual orientation / gender identity, but I don't do any of that. Even if they did impact me, those fall into things I just don't bring up on the internet. Likewise, I imagine it may be harder for women that are dealing with online stalkers, but again, that hasn't been something I've had to deal with. Plus, any organization that REALLY wanted to find me can simply reverse lookup the account IP addresses anyway. If I think an account that I want to remain private has gonna a bit too personal, I simply retire the account name. It can be annoying if account karma/points/whatever is "important", but... eh... I made plenty of DnD characters over the years, I can start using another character's name or something with a pun. Internet points only limit what I can and can't do on a site, nothing else. > maybe one should avoid posting with real name altogether, anywhere. That's always an option. Since I used tsumnia for so long, I sort of just DECIDED to let it be public. I had more or less doxxed myself (or narrowed down who tsumnia could be) before I openly said it was me. No different than a YouTuber doing a face reveal, except I don't have millions of fans. Instead of retiring tsumnia, I acknowledged it and created a new one that doesn't connect to me. I imagine that's how lots of usernames start - being anonymous but occasionally they drop a nugget of personal information. Those accrue over time and boom, its an alias. I'm a little more cautious to drop personal information on the other accounts, but I think its because I can always use tsumnia for those situations.

OkayPhysicist 4y ago

Is lying in-of-itself unethical? I'd be curious to probe a framework that thinks it is, while not holding that axiomatically. As someone who leans heavily into consequentialism, I can think of plenty of times lying can lead to a net positive for everyone. Likewise, there are harmful truths that should be suppressed. That suggests to me that lying is, in-of-itself, amoral. The effect of the lie (or the intent, if you swing that way) determines whether it's ethical or not. Who is harmed by your assuming a fabricated identity? For the vast majority of people, who exactly you are matter little. So it's hard to suggest they are harmed by having an incorrect model of you. It may be manipulative to those trying to piece together your identity, but being doxxed can and often does lead to harm befalling your person, so your lies against them can be plainly justified under self-defense.

bobkazamakis 4y ago
You seem pretty confident in a subjective opinion.
- mlyle 4y ago
  We're having a normative discussion and we have our own beliefs. It's to be expected.
- OkayPhysicist 4y ago
  It would make little sense not to be confident in a subjective opinion. As the sole arbiter of truth concerning my subjective experience, it would be absurd to waffle about it.
altruios 4y ago
There are frameworks that have lying as axiomatically evil. But to be consistent - a painful truth must be preferable to a rewarding lie. To live a lie free life is to invite pain, and to view that pain as both functional and necessary - it is not for the weak to try.
toolz 4y ago
I agree with this line of thinking. Especially the focus on effect. If your persona is made with the pure intent of anonymity and you make an ordinary persona whose abilities aren't exaggerated and could easily be swapped with your own persona without much impact on the people you converse with, then I don't think any harm is being done and you're merely keeping your anonymity while still presenting your authentic abilities and personality to some online community.

rzzzt 4y ago

> This seems like a pretty straightforward mechanism for covert operatives, to generate a believable (and memorizable) cover I think the official term is "legend" for this one. This occasionally comes up in spy movies and I also get some search results for it.

vehemenz 4y ago

Before it was de rigeur to use real names on the Internet, most of us used personas that were informed by our handles. It's unusual—I might even say unethical, if moral realism were coherent—to insist on real names as a matter of honesty given that real names disproportionately benefit the powerful. The powerless cannot use their real names on the Internet because often there are real world consequences.

chaboud 4y ago
I don't insist on this (or even suggest it) for others (I'm an old BBS'er), but I do generally use my real name on the internet.

RobotToaster 4y ago

Is it a lie to choose a name to go by at different times? Why should you always have to use the name your parents gave you. Some people are even better known by their nom de plume than their real name, from Mark Twain to Lenin. In many cases the law even protects the right for artists to use a pseudonym under artist's moral rights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights

jareklupinski 4y ago

Rusty Shackleford, pleased to meet ya https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okN4P2l1QCk&t=45s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okN4P2l1QCk&t=45s

didgetmaster 4y ago

Am I being unethical when I tell the medicare supplemental insurance salesman from India that I am only 22 years old (while hoping to be taken off their list of potential customers) when he asks me my age?

kerpotgh 4y ago

There is no ethical issue here. The companies asking for your identity generally don’t need it and providing them with a persona could be argued is the more ethical route given the implications it has on privacy and mass surveillance.

nobody9999 4y ago
>There is no ethical issue here. The companies asking for your identity generally don’t need it and providing them with a persona could be argued is the more ethical route given the implications it has on privacy and mass surveillance. I'd say, to quote a bad movie[0] that "the only winning move is not to play." Giving those entities even a fake persona will negatively impact your privacy over the medium to long term. The better solution is for folks to vote with their feet and refuse to use such entities. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be a popular choice, but that doesn't mean it isn't the right one. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames

daniel-grigg 4y ago

People practice personas everyday of their lives, the only difference in the post is the explicit labelling of them. The avatar I present here is different to how I behave in person, or how I engage at work, my friends, my family.

Taywee 4y ago

Maybe I'm from a different era, but I still think that the best default position is that anything somebody has listed about themselves online may be a work of fiction that we shouldn't be expected to take at face value in most contexts. If encryption is not immoral, encrypting your personal information is also not immoral, even if you also want plausible deniability. Privacy is not unethical. If a persona and pseudonym is the best route to that, you aren't hurting anybody. As a person who prizes the idea that what we say and do are more important than who we are, I disagree that honesty and ethics always align. If some dishonesty maximizes peoples' actual wellbeing, then that dishonestly is probably actually more ethical than the honesty that compromises and hurts people for no gain other than ideological purity.

ljm 4y ago
I’m not sure how you’re pulling encryption into this argument. You can be honest or dishonest and it will be encrypted and decrypted all the same. Your second argument to me doesn’t follow. You are saying what you say and do is more important than what you value, I think, but you are also saying that what you say and do are not important so you can be dishonest. My conclusion is that you prize winning over being ethical. Just think of all the other cases where honesty and ethics have been put on the back burner on the basis that you think your thing is more important; a lot of them legal.
- Taywee 4y ago
  You use an alias or a persona to mask your identity, just as you use encryption to mask information. Keeping something intentionally hidden, either via an alias or encryption, is not dishonest nor unethical. I do not prize winning. I'm not sure who is "winning" or "losing" when I decide to not publish my name. I'll note that I use my real name and attach my real identity to lots of things. I just don't agree that people who choose to mask their identity through a plausible persona are somehow walking an ethical tightrope. They are entitled to use a fake name.
1659447091 4y ago
> As a person who prizes the idea that what we say and do are more important than who we are I am not sure I follow - what we say and do is who we are, how could it be otherwise?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

link_108 4y ago

"A persona requires misrepresentation, which is not the same as de facto anonymity." I don't this this is correct, as a persona can accurately represent you, its just a persona. If you want to continue to be anonymous with a persona that represents you, I think differential privacy could help in this situation.

chaosharmonic 4y ago

Yeahhhhhh, not that there aren't totally valid reasons to opt for pseudonyms, but I also see a lot of overlap here with the Lorenzo Von Matterhorn.

imgabe 4y ago

You have no ethical obligation to provide accurate personal information to an untrusted party.

Kim_Bruning 4y ago

To lie is to make an untrue statement with the intent to deceive. In a play, actors make untrue[1] statements, but the audience is in on it, so there is no intent to deceive, and indeed no one ends up deceived. Some professions like police officers, firefighters, doctors, military officers, etc might wear uniforms/special clothing and act in a certain way too. No one actually believes that you change into a different person when you put on a uniform, so again no deception takes place. Back in the 90's it was simply assumed everyone used a pseudonymous persona [2], so again no intent and no deception. Many people still use pseudonymous personas to this day! The Author of this article DOES take things a bit far. I'd definitely want to be a bit careful recommending their approach. If you want your persona to interact with the real world, then all the aspects relevant to the interaction do need to be true. For example: depending on context, it may or may not be fine to have a persona who claims to be university professor, but if you start falsely using that credential for real world gain, you may have crossed a line. [3] So in the end I think it's ethically ok to use personas, provided there is no intent to deceive. -- [1] Arguably: untrue in this world, but perhaps true in the world of the play? [2] "on the internet, no one knows if you're a dog" [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essjay_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essjay_controversy

User23 4y ago

The easy out is that you make it eminently clear that the persona is a fictitious character. At that point it becomes much like any other performer who wears a costume and uses a stage name.

sorry_outta_gas 4y ago

thats a fucking lie

coryfklein 4y ago

Wait how is this even controversial. We have decades, perhaps centuries, of precedent in liberal democracy of writing under pseudonyms. Since nearly your entire presence online is via your writing, I don’t see how it could possibly be ethically wrong to write online under a pseudonym. If having a fake image in addition to your name bothers you then just use a blank avatar or something. The whole point of pseudonyms has been that a) your work should stand for itself and not be impacted by your identity and b) to protect individuals. Can someone use pseudonyms to perform unethical or fraudulent activity, of course. But the pseudonym itself is not unethical.

FrontierPsych 4y ago

>That said, as someone who prizes ethical behavior, it's not possible to practice this and remain wholly honest Yes, I get it. When I go for job interviews, they ask me what my weaknesses are, I say that I fuck off every once in a while, that I will sometimes badmouth the company and my boss after I leave the company. That sometimes I go to the company bathroom and masterbate to relieve stress. That I don't really like my mother because she is a meth addict all her life even when she was pregnant with me so when I was in her womb, I was basically on meth, too, and it really fucked up my mental capacities and so sometimes I go off in an irrational manner and maybe will start yelling at people. I belch and fart a lot, too and that usually upsets co-workers. I go on and on like this for about 20 minutes on all my weaknesses, because I want to make sure that I completely answer their question in an ethical manner, because I don't lie by ommission. They didn't ask me what my "strengths disguesed as a weakness" were, or how to "spin it by giving the best picture of myself" and "market myself" to them. It's the same with women when they ask about me. I say that I fart and burp a lot as mentioned above. They are not regular farts but real stench bombs. I also pick my nose a lot in public and then eat it but not when people can see. So far, I can't get a job for the last 15 years despite my interviewing 80-100 interviews per year. And no girlfriend. But at least I can be internally happy because I'm ethical and honest and never lie, and give the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.