I checked a few random user names and I am confused.
- Why is the author costco[0] not in this lookup?
Show HN: Using stylometry to find HN users with alternate accounts
281–290 of 562 posts
Re: Show HN: Using stylometry to find HN users with alternate accounts
#282Over in the D language forums, we welcome people who post under a pseudonym, and our policy is we won't allow attempts to unmask them. This is to protect high profile users who are secretly enjoying programming in D rather than the language they are supposed to use. And, of course, to protect users who feel they might be discriminated against if their background was known.
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Re: Show HN: Using stylometry to find HN users with alternate accounts
#283This is a super interesting tool for self reflection. Looking at the top 10 similar accounts to mine, it gives me an arms-length view of how other people probably interpret my tone. I appear to be a well-educated, over-confident know-it-all.
> I appear to be a well-educated, over-confident know-it-all. Don't we all?
I hate us insufferable nerds.
!
Re: Show HN: Using stylometry to find HN users with alternate accounts
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
I keep no alternate accounts, but this tool reports best matches for me that appear to be Slavic or just Russian - and I am Russian. Best match score in my list is just above 0.5. There are some clearly alternate accounts on the list, their match scores with this tool are well above 0.7. It is probable that persons of same cultural origin will have similar writing style and vocabulary. It is also probable that person…
There're 19 other accounts this tool finds similar to me. Those are not my accounts. 0.46 - 0.56 are numbers.
Fwiw, and as gp mentioned, > 0.7 seems more likely to be alt territory.
Re: Show HN: Using stylometry to find HN users with alternate accounts
#285I tried dang's old account (gruseom) expecting to see his dang account listed. Nothing. Tried dang, sctb (a previous admin) was listed as closest match. I wouldn't rely on these results https://stylometry.net/user?username=gruseom https://stylometry.net/user?username=dang
I wouldn't rely on these results
You picked a user who posts a massive volume of repeat, template-y comments and found their former colleague who also posted piles of repeat, template-y comments, that being part of both of their jobs.
Re: Show HN: Using stylometry to find HN users with alternate accounts
#286Anything like this for Reddit? Would translating to other language and back defend against this algorithm?
> Anything like this for Reddit? No but it would be easily adaptable especially given that Pushshift is archiving every Reddit comment. Based on some of the feedback I'm getting here I don't know if I should open source this even though it really wasn't that hard to make. > Would translating to other language and back defend against this algorithm? Yes. But then you have to send your original comment to a translation…
> But then you have to send your original comment to a translation company so there are privacy concerns there too.
There are modern offline translation systems available such as Bergamot https://browser.mt/
Re: Show HN: Using stylometry to find HN users with alternate accounts
#287Can we find Satoshi with this?
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Re: Show HN: Using stylometry to find HN users with alternate accounts
#288After a few tries on boring accounts, I thought to try the account of somebody who was notorious for an incident outside of HN, and had a (deservedly) bad time at HN for a couple of years before the account went dark. And yeah, there's a bunch of high confidence (.6-.8) hits for that account, and from a quick browse of the comments of the recently active ones, they look really likely to be alts. Like, all three that…
0.6 isn't much. I have 3 matches above 0.6, and they're not me. 20 or so over 0.5.
I get one 0.68 match, which... fair enough. It is an account I've abandoned some years ago, no secrets there.
No other hits above 0.5, so I guess that either makes me pretty unique as a commentator or my English is broken in a unique way.
Re: Show HN: Using stylometry to find HN users with alternate accounts
#289This is cool!
If an account returns a high score for many accounts, does that also mean they’re relatively less original in style?
Re: Show HN: Using stylometry to find HN users with alternate accounts
#290How long until this becomes the algorithm for a dating site? “Find hot single women who write just like you”
This seems like a great way to hire freelance copywriters/ghost writers too. I would absolutely hire someone I knew could match my tone well for writing generic unattributed copy.