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Show HN: Using stylometry to find HN users with alternate accounts

stylometry.net

141–150 of 562 posts

Re: Show HN: Using stylometry to find HN users with alternate accounts

#141
> I made this site mostly to show how easy this is and how it can erode online privacy

looks like it can indeed

> Here are some frequent HN commenters: (EDIT: Removed due to privacy concerns)

How surprising that someone might object to being included in a demonstration of the erosion of privacy!

Is the site opt-in or opt-out?

Re: Show HN: Using stylometry to find HN users with alternate accounts

#144
post #8
post #3

Why are some users bold?

Say you see user2 listed in bold on user1's page. That means that user1 is also in user2's top 20 users. In my experience it is often an indicator of a good match (but not always). I should probably explain that on the site.

Instead of making it binary, you could use a gradient indicating the strength of the mutual correlation (like how HN colors downvoted comments).

Re: Show HN: Using stylometry to find HN users with alternate accounts

#145

Ha, gruseom shows up for pg, which is dang’s old account. A worthy successor. This is a fascinating way to find similar HN users who aren’t the same person. It’s a surprisingly great recommendation engine. “If you like pg, you might also like…” Sure, the privacy concerns are valid, but the cat’s out of the boot. Might as well enjoy the benefits. montrose is almost definitely pg. Someone who talks about ancient histor…

> Someone who talks about ancient history, Occam’s razor, VCs and startups,

I think these are all common topics among HN readers and commenters.

Re: Show HN: Using stylometry to find HN users with alternate accounts

#146
post #95

at what threshold is it considering alt account?

There is no threshold. This site does not make any call as to whether a user is an alt or not. It just gives the users with the most similar word choice and from there it is up to you to decide (is there a very specific detail that both accounts mention, do they post at similar times, etc). I will say bolded accounts are substantially more likely to be alts though. But obviously it is not guaranteed that every user has an alt.

Re: Show HN: Using stylometry to find HN users with alternate accounts

#148
post #136

What does the bold signify? For example when I search for dang ( https://stylometry.net/user?username=dang ) the 4th most likely user is not bold whereas the 16th is?

Say you see user2 listed in bold on user1's page. That means that user1 is also in user2's top 20 users. In my experience it is often an indicator of a good match (but not always).

Huh, that's a somewhat non intuitive property.

Re: Show HN: Using stylometry to find HN users with alternate accounts

#149
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

stavrosk doesn't have any posts/comments? What's it using to match?

It's my old username.

Huh... seems there are some inconsistencies between what's presented on news.ycombinator.com and the Firebase API. Glad it matches for you though :)

Re: Show HN: Using stylometry to find HN users with alternate accounts

#150

The scary thing is that once you have this data, finding HN matches for individual targeted users on other sites becomes trivial, even if those sites are harder to scrape. I bet most people here have an anonymous Reddit account, for example. If you wanted to know who was behind a particular Reddit account, you could feed it into something like this and compare the results with HN, where accounts are less likely to be…

Thus proving the only actually anonymous community in practice is 4chan, and that’s why it’s so toxic.
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