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Show HN: Anonymize HN – a Chrome extension to anonymize Hacker News users
I wrote a small Chrome extension that allows the user to replace all usernames on Hacker News with either the string `anonymous` or a deterministic hashed value.
- mdwalters 3y agoIs this also for Firefox?
- danthelion 3y agoOnly Chrome, might check out how to port it when I have some time.
- LinuxBender 3y agoIt could probably be done using uBlock.
- millzlane 3y agoRight-click a username above a comment Block element Paste the following in the text box ## td > table > tbody > tr > .default > div > .comhead > .hnuser Click the Create Button
- LinuxBender 3y agoConfirmed that works. Added to "My Filters" Thankyou # HN Username news.ycombinator.com## td > table > tbody > tr > .default > div > .comhead > .hnuser That would be a good addition to LetsBlockIt [1] [1] - https://letsblock.it/filters/tag/hackernews https://letsblock.it/filters/tag/hackernews
- millzlane 3y agoDone. Well, issue opened.
- kaycebasques 3y agoInteresting idea! Presumably you pay a lot of attention to who has written a comment and want to remove that bias? In my case I usually don't recognize the author for any given comment so I don't really have that problem.
- Tactician_mark 3y agoDepends on the viewing platform, but HN usernames are usually small font and low contrast compared to comment text. I think most are unlikely to notice who said what.
- danthelion 3y agoYes, that was precisely the motivation! (+ some interest in learning how to publish a Chrome extension).
- freedomben 3y agoAlways interesting to hear how others do things. There are only a handful of usernames that I know, but when I look for them it's important because (for example) they are the author/creator of a tool. From just a couple minutes ago for example, reading the Elixir post[1] the comments from josevalim are from the creator of the language, and the author of TFA. Not knowing that I think would make the thread a lot different (IMHO in a bad way), but I can definitely see the appeal of anonymizing other times. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37122006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37122006
- kaycebasques 3y agoMaybe the extension should also randomize the ordering of comments. Because I can infer that the top comment is more likely to be from someone influential in the space.
- tredre3 3y agoSometimes I read a comment that I completely disagree with, but then I recognize the username and it's someone well respected on HN. So I enter a cycle of self doubts; "Am I out of touch? No, it's the HN elite that is out of touch."
- harha_ 3y agoI like the idea, but honestly I very rarely pay attention to usernames here.
- _8j50 3y agoLike others I rarely pay attention to the username, except all the "famous" people on HN you just can't miss when they are posting. But I think you mean psuedonimyze? Because you can easily tell who is posting using stylometry or just human brain pattern recognition.
- Loughla 3y agoWait. Who are the famous people on HN (other than Dang, because he's the only one I recognize. . . ). What and who am I missing?
- airstrike 3y agopg comes to mind? https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg also the occasional founder/CEO who may comment on some story related to their company
- hu3 3y agoIn Go posts I always look for rsc messages. Which is Russ Cox from Bell Labs and Google. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rsc https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rsc https://swtch.com/~rsc https://swtch.com/~rsc Also Rich Harris, creator of Svelte and SvelteKit: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rich_harris https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rich_harris Redis creator chimes in from time to time: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=antirez https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=antirez There are more I'm sure.
- freedomben 3y agoExactly. I would also add josevalim creator of Elixir, who I actually Ctrl+F for on Elixir-related threads. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=josevalim https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=josevalim
- nwoli 3y agoI can only think of jgc, hardmaru and karpathy as people I see around here more than once
- pessimizer 3y agoI try my best to treat every forum like /b/. All people are is what they just said. I'm not having a conversation with an individual, I'm having a conversation with a venue. I'm grabbing the floor and addressing the chair. I bet if HN went forced anon, it wouldn't make much of a difference in posting and upvoting patterns.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- superkuh 3y agoI disagree. I get a regular stream of people referencing my past comments (like days or weeks before on entirely different subjects). I think this only really applies to highly active posters with opinions that stick out though. I would definitely use this extension if it were written for a real browser instead of googlestuff. It wouldn't help with others behaving based on identity but I like the idea.
- Loughla 3y agoThat's interesting. I have never had anyone reference my prior comments. Maybe it's because I don't say controversial things? I wonder what the difference is.
- mywittyname 3y agoI've had people reach out to me because of past work I've talked about on here. Mainly potential startup founders looking for opinions/feedback. The only time I ever look at someone's post history is if they are interesting, insightful, or famous(ish) (and use their real name).
- fragmede 3y agoFor local industry celebrities, like geohot, Jeff Barr, patio11, or select few from https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders, people track what they say, or at least I do, simply from having run across their sometimes prolific comments, and get a sense of their views on things, even if the exact wording gets forgotten. So when they say something out of character, it reflexively seems weird enough to go back and check.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hu3 3y agoNice. Another suggestion is to randomize message order (so removes top voted bias) and to perhaps un-gray downvoted messages.
- freedomben 3y agoIt would be fascinating to see some data on grayed messages. I know in my case I look for them so that if I feel they are unfairly downvoted, I can vote them up. I would bet 50% of them I end up voting up, usually because they were downvoted for having an unpopular but not invalid opinion. If there is anybody else out there like me, then the gray could be a net positive because it prevents unfair downvotes from killing a comment unfairly. But I could also see myself being in a minority and the effect of the gray is compounding. So seeing some data would be really interesting.
- renewiltord 3y agoTwo amusing related things: - https://github.com/roshan/hnncnn https://github.com/roshan/hnncnn (no comments and usernames on the front page) - https://stylometry.net/ https://stylometry.net/ (no longer works, but stylometry for various HN users - it was pretty good!)
- throwawayq3423 3y ago[dead]
- mpsprd 3y agoTangentially, I always found the discussion flow on image boards interesting because of the "anonymous chorus" of replies. It creates special patterns: cryptic references to spot non-initiates, people role-playing a straw man and replying to themselves, shunning people using confirmed user names, etc. There is jargon for all of this but it is too offensive for this venue.
- jabroni_salad 3y agoI kind of like the threadID system that some boards use. Unfortunately(?) the ones I frequent are too tame for it to get enabled.
- searchableguy 3y agoDo people recognise usernames on HN? I would be surprised if anyone remembered or recognised my username on HN and added any association to my comments.
- mywittyname 3y agoYeah, I remember a few people by their usernames. Mostly users who share the same interests as me.
- circuit10 3y agoI remember seeing you on the EleutherAI Discord I think
- fragmede 3y agoWell, you do happen to be searchable...
- PartiallyTyped 3y agoYes, I do remember a few people once I read their handles, like this guy [1]. [1] https://kidger.site https://kidger.site
- laurentlb 3y agoUsually not, but it happens that I recognize the username of someone I've met before, or authors of specific tools. Of course, this works only for people who use a their name or a similar username in other places. I certainly don't associate people with their previous comments on HN.
- omoikane 3y agoSome usernames do show up quite often, especially the ones who ended up here: https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders I recognize some recurring usernames, but don't necessarily associate them with anything outside the context of HN.
- dijit 3y agomaybe like 5 people, including dang. If you asked me to name them though I wouldn't be able to, but when I see their comments I remember them. Interesting how that works.
- joset9264 3y ago[dead]
- fortran77 3y agoFor some reason, on this site usernames rarely matter to me. I know only 1 or 2 people by username.
- neontomo 3y agoMight be interesting to combine with: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30668137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30668137 https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/441566-hn-avatars-in-396-bytes https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/441566-hn-avatars-in-396-b... Description: The concept is to use HN usernames as the seed into a deterministic avatar generator. This generator is built from the famously simple xorshift32 PRNG, which both provides a random variable for the image generator steps, and "pseudo-hashes" the seed string to provide the initial PRNG state using a non-linear step (adding each codepoint - which is likely not very robust against collisions compared to proper hashing algorithms, but is simple and good enough). And do away with the username, but still keep an avatar based on their username to make it easier to follow the flow of a thread.
- jorvi 3y agoIf they also seeded with the post ID, you're cooking. Basically turns it into 4Chan with tripcodes. Technically you can re-use your tripcode but the community there really really looks down on doing that (or used to, I haven't been there in something like a decade).
- neontomo 3y agoTo what purpose? To make a new avatar for every new comment, regardless of poster?
- jorvi 3y agoNo, you would have the same avatar under a post (so it is grokkable who is replying to who), but your avatar would differ between posts. The tree within HN is "post > thread > comment", no? There is a lot of use in having the same avatar within threads and across threads, but I don't see much use in having the same avatar across posts. All it leads to is point farming, echo chambering and bandwagoning. Many times I see well-known users with recognizable usernames offer insightful comments. They are very knowledgeable, well-informed and polite. Many times however, if someone else dares to go against this user with an equally valid well-informed polite countercomment, groupies of said recognizable user will nuke those comments into deep grey, purely because it goes against their god and he must be right. You see this across all subcommunities that have a point system and usernames. People lose sight of the content and will blindly follow whoever is the most well-known person within that community. Something like Reddit, but with the value-judging system of imageboards would be a godsend.
- Bilal_io 3y agoIt would be vrry interesting to clone and repurpose this extension to show tags next to known users from a centralized database. Example's of the tags would be "mod", "{name of tool/library/language} author", "expert in {area}", "CEO of {comapny name}", etc.
- nbittich 3y agoI stopped at "a chrome extension", if you are using chrome, you shouldn't care about anonymity
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]