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Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery

sive.rs

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Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery

#251

Post by Kiro »

boring_twenties wrote: post #178
Kiro wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 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.

In 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…

I missed that they meant in offline situations as well.

Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery

#252

Post by link_108 »

chaboud wrote: post #19

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 so…

"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.

Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery

#253

Post by trinsic2 »

jacobmartin wrote: post #145
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The deontologist believes lying is against the universal maxim. If everybody lied all the time, we wouldn't have a functioning society. The virtue ethicist believes it is bad to be in a habit to lie because being predisposed to lying is opposed to the virtue of the truth. We've all known people who lie by habit and they are unpleasant and vicious to be around. I don't know if most virtue ethicists (who don't also fal…

I agree. I side more with Deontology. But I understand that lieing should be used in small doses and only to protect the just from the unjust.

Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery

#254

Post by staindk »

rlt wrote: post #31

Satoshi is the only very high profile person I’m aware of to remain completely (pseud)onymous. Many others have tried and failed (though they often broke the law, so that might be the main distinguishing factor)

Not "monetarily" as high value as some of the other examples here, but Icefrog, the lead developer/game balancer for Dota and Dota 2 is also mostly pseudonymous.

I think if it weren't for some stupid comments by a League developer (?), no normal people would know who he is. Now, if you try hard enough, you can find his identity leaked in an old blog/forum post (?) and have it proven/corroborated in other areas online I think.

Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery

#256

Post by chaosharmonic »

chaboud wrote: post #19

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 so…

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.

Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery

#257

Post by MagicMoonlight »

rlt wrote: post #31

Satoshi is the only very high profile person I’m aware of to remain completely (pseud)onymous. Many others have tried and failed (though they often broke the law, so that might be the main distinguishing factor)

Because he’s not a real person. He’s a CIA or NSA project.

It’s like the group “Anonymous” that conveniently only shows up when the CIA has an objective and then disappears again.

Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery

#258

Post by jacobmartin »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #226
prepend wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If everybody lied all the time, we wouldn't have a functioning society. This is true. But I don’t think anyone makes the point that someone should lie all the time. Especially not that everyone should lie all the time. I think that there’s an ethical argument for lieing for some greater purpose (eg, a spy working for the Underground Railroad).

That phrasing has to do with how Kant thinks you come to discover moral truths: it’s an appeal to Kant’s idea of the categorical imperative which, for him, is the basis of all morals. So, essentially, the claim here is “since you cannot lie all the time and have a functioning society then, by my prior arguments about what morality is, you can never lie”

Yes, precisely. Sorry I wasn't clear about that.

Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery

#259

Post by warner25 »

throwaway4837 wrote: post #131

I had an idea a few years ago around anonymity, but now it seems even more possible with things like billion parameter LLMs. A service where you enter text that you want to post on Reddit/Twitter/etc. but you instead give it to your locally-running model, which is trained to output the text with the following transformations: 1. Writing style change 2. Degree of extra/reduced fluff 3. Degree of typos 4. Typing style…

I just want to say that this is a really interesting comment and set of ideas. I'm a PhD student in the area of privacy and anonymity, so I think about this stuff a lot. To your point about the emergent style of Reddit and HN comments, developed through the timely feedback of upvotes, I've often wondered how tools like suggested or predictive text are changing writing styles; like when I'm tapping out a quick email or text message on my Android phone and the keyboard suggests the next word that I probably wouldn't have come up with on my own, but it sounds good enough or better so I accept it. I thought the analysis that people have done on the writing style of Satoshi Nakamoto was the most persuasive evidence of his real identity, and I think you're correct that someone could now mask or morph their writing style in a very convincing way with these tools.

Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery

#260

Post by throwaway4837 »

warner25 wrote: post #259
throwaway4837 wrote: post #131

I had an idea a few years ago around anonymity, but now it seems even more possible with things like billion parameter LLMs. A service where you enter text that you want to post on Reddit/Twitter/etc. but you instead give it to your locally-running model, which is trained to output the text with the following transformations: 1. Writing style change 2. Degree of extra/reduced fluff 3. Degree of typos 4. Typing style…

I just want to say that this is a really interesting comment and set of ideas. I'm a PhD student in the area of privacy and anonymity, so I think about this stuff a lot. To your point about the emergent style of Reddit and HN comments, developed through the timely feedback of upvotes, I've often wondered how tools like suggested or predictive text are changing writing styles; like when I'm tapping out a quick email o…

Incidentally, I first learned about Stylometry when reading about people using it to decipher the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, so I'm happy you brought it up. I had my suspicions that bot farms for Reddit (even before 2019) were doing something similar to this to generate massive amounts of fake account activity to make subreddits appear popular. Now it seems like a piece of cake to do this with things like GPT-3.
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