[HN Gopher] Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery
___________________________________________________________________
Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery
Author : Tomte
Score : 346 points
Date : 2023-02-03 17:07 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sive.rs)
(TXT) w3m dump (sive.rs)
| onetimeusename wrote:
| I've noticed the number of places that let you use ephemeral
| accounts has really dwindled. Spam, marketing, LE, and I am sure
| other reasons have it so persistent accounts are more common. So
| creating a persona is probably the easiest way to be somewhat
| anonymous online but it's getting harder to create unlinked
| accounts (using new phone numbers and unlinked to your other
| accounts) and when it crosses into the real world like with
| shipping products it gets weird. Your mailman might think a
| stranger is living with you.
| philwelch wrote:
| A fun book about this stuff is Michael Bazell's _Extreme
| Privacy: What It Takes to Disappear in America_. With extreme
| effort you can keep a surprising number of things unlinked from
| your government name if you really want to.
| ghaff wrote:
| Thanks for the link. I went down a bit of a rabbit hole on
| this a few years back after seeing on of the hosts of the
| reality show Hunted (former White House CIO) give a talk.
| There was a long Wired article on this topic years ago too.
|
| https://www.wired.com/2009/11/ff-vanish2/
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Your mailman might think a stranger is living with you.
|
| All the better! I don't know why this would be a problem.
| ghaff wrote:
| >when it crosses into the real world like with shipping
| products it gets weird. Your mailman might think a stranger is
| living with you.
|
| Not really a problem. A friend of mine used my address (with
| permission) when they were doing a lot of international travel.
| Mail (and packages) were never an issue.
|
| These days you'd probably be advised to have some sort of
| burner phone.
|
| In general, the closer you get to the physical world, the
| harder it is to maintain anonymity.
| trinsic2 wrote:
| I like what this guy has to say and I like that he is centered on
| helping people. His writing reflects that. I have one of his blog
| posts on my wall "How to thrive in a unknowable future" and when
| this article came through Hacker News I immediately identified
| the name.
|
| If the original poster wants to chime in how he found this writer
| that would be of interest to me. Thanks for this post. Posts like
| this make the world a better place to live in.
| misterprime wrote:
| Very good, Old Sport!
| drcongo wrote:
| I have an alter-ego that I release music as. I like that nobody
| knows who that is, but weirdly I think my alter-ego is a much
| more likeable character than me.
| qbrass wrote:
| I share the same name as a semi-famous, semi-local musician.
|
| That made for a couple interesting phone calls over the years.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I use VPN's when I can, I mix up my browsers, and I've largely
| abandoned social media. Hopefully it helps _shrugs_
| didgetmaster wrote:
| I feel so much more comfortable when someone cold calls me with a
| thick Indian accent and tells me his name is John (or Mike)
| before trying to sell me an extended car warranty or life
| insurance!
| dailyplanet wrote:
| This works, as long as you don't have to paypal people. Is there
| a way to make paypal transactions anonymous to the other party?
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I had an idea for a funny little startup once: "Adopt an alter
| ego"
|
| Essentially a marketplace where you can buy and sell prebuilt
| identities - complete with associated, aged, and populated social
| media accounts, email accounts, pictures, websites, etc.
|
| I just like the idea of being different people online.
| boffinism wrote:
| I love the idea that social media accounts, like wine, are more
| valuable if they're sufficiently aged.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Sounds like a side project idea: you enter a description of a
| persona, the bot buys some phone verified social media
| accounts, as well as gmail/msn/whatever (plenty of market
| places around) add uses GPT3 to periodically generate posts on
| said social media accounts, using the persona description.
|
| Then you just need to fill the pipeline with persona ideas, and
| get nice account packages after a couple months.
| timerol wrote:
| The main roadblock here is the crime. You would need some
| safeguards to make sure these people aren't real enough to
| receive any government benefits, or open a bank account.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| I disagree. The idea that we should nerf our security tools
| to prevent them from being used unethically just results in
| people using nerfed security tools for ethical purposes,
| while the people doing unethical things go elsewhere for
| their security tools.
|
| Put another way, if your crypto isn't used by child molesters
| and terrorists, it's probably not very good crypto.
| zerodensity wrote:
| Liked the write-up was a fun read.
|
| But I really don't get the point of being anonymous on social
| media.
| moffkalast wrote:
| > Create a believable persona
|
| This is also a lot harder than it seems, once you start lying
| it's easy to slip up or provide details that are aren't self
| consistent. As long as you rely on people just accepting the
| answer and being immediately satisfied with that it'll work.
|
| Inb4 "oh hey I'm also from <town suburb name you lied being
| from>, remember that one thing?".
| itchyouch wrote:
| If one's town had a neighboring rival town/school growing up,
| using the rival town could provide a semblance of
| cohesiveness due to still being intimate with many of the
| details of said town as a rival.
| ghaff wrote:
| I agree with your general point.
|
| But, assuming I wanted a fake background that would pass
| casual scrutiny, I'd make something up that was close enough
| to the truth but not close enough that anyone would think
| anything was off if we got to casual chatting. I'd probably
| say I was from and/or lived in some city I knew extremely
| well but had never actually lived in. Maybe say I got an
| undergrad degree from somewhere I got a grad degree. Etc.
| JohnFen wrote:
| The key is to avoid lying. Don't try to make up things that
| aren't true, just emphasize and deemphasize different aspects
| of your true self. That's plenty enough the majority of the
| time.
| jacooper wrote:
| Saying what you want without worrying about being canceled in
| 10 years.
| underwater wrote:
| If your words will get you cancelled then maybe you should
| just keep them to yourself.
| jxf wrote:
| Now this makes me wonder if Derek Sivers is a real person or not.
| alx__ wrote:
| My new online persona will be Derek Sirvers
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| Nice to meet you Derek, I am Serek Dirvers
| Derek_Sivers wrote:
| [flagged]
| runjake wrote:
| This wasn't as funny as you thought it'd be.
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| Dirk Servers here, just saying hi.
| EGreg wrote:
| Cool, mine too!
|
| I used to go by Satoshi Nakamoto and be in the group
| Anonymous. I put out a few of those videos, but people kept
| challenging whether I was the "real" Anonymous.
|
| Interesting thing, I was in Barcelona last week, and just out
| of the blue I meet Bill Murray and he buys me ice cream. He
| said "no one will ever believe you!" Before he left, I told
| him my name was Satoshi Nakamoto.
|
| I'm just carrying on the work of my grandfather, Nicolas
| Bourbaki. Just like David Belle was doing what his father,
| Raymond Belle, began in Viet Nam.
| runjake wrote:
| Derek Sivers is definitely a real person. You can trace his
| history, _well, back when he was in America_ , using public
| records.
|
| But, I think as even he has admitted, his online presence is a
| well-crafted persona.
|
| And, aren't we all doing that?
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Maybe it's because I'm the kind of guy who took the "On the
| Internet, no one knows you're a dog" comic to heart, but I don't
| assume truth about any type of online profile, and I usually
| don't go cyber stalking anyone just because their online handle
| sounds mysterious.
|
| Picking a new identity might be a good branding decision
| (especially if you can get NewName dot com!), but I'm also the
| kind of guy who looks at the message, not the messenger, so
| whether I focus on what you're saying or not has nothing to do
| with the online persona you've created for yourself.
| sovietswag wrote:
| Cool... this post reminds me of Fravia's "enemy tracking" essay
| from his pages of reverse engineering:
| https://www.darkridge.com/~jpr5/mirror/fravia.org/enemy.htm. If
| you've never browsed this site, prepare to enter the mother lode
| of rabbit holes...
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Aww hell yes, copyright 1999 and HTML to match!
| userbinator wrote:
| Also the identity of Fravia himself.
| aliqot wrote:
| Use a PURDAH, like in "Fall; or Dodge In Hell"
| photoGrant wrote:
| Okay 'Derek', good advice.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > It's human nature to want to know who's speaking. If they don't
| say, it creates a mystery.
|
| Yes it's human nature to want things but, socially, one might
| learn to go without something if it's at odds with what someone
| else wants. If someone doesn't let me keep private things which I
| would prefer to keep private, unfortunately I will simply learn
| to avoid that person.
|
| That's to say, "make a persona" is being offered as a panacea to
| when those around me don't allow for privacy but it is a panacea
| I would not choose.
| macawfish wrote:
| Simulacra 101
| [deleted]
| gre wrote:
| Maybe Adam Johnson of the Citations Needed podcast is just an
| entirely made up persona?
|
| https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7C...
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| lormayna wrote:
| Catfishers are thanking the author for the great suggestions!
| sircastor wrote:
| In one of his novels Cory Doctorow talks about his bad guys doing
| astroturfing with persona management software to help them track
| who said what to whom.
|
| As the advertising and tracking arms race escalates, I wonder if
| there's a burgeoning industry for personal persona management. So
| you can isolate your private life from your public life/lives.
| vmoore wrote:
| > Am I talking with someone from Australia? Philippines? Brazil?
| Are they 20 or 60? Male or female
|
| Well due to how easy it is to create a fake identity on social
| media, knowing who someone /really/ is, is the real quest. I've
| experimented with creating completely false identities on social
| media, and populated the profiles with plausible information.
|
| I went the extra mile and created fake domain names, under my
| alias, fake AI created profile pictures, fake family members,
| even fake boyfriends. I avoided anything that could be unraveled
| like saying I work at such and such a company, when there is no
| employee records under my name at that company (Fake LinkedIN
| profiles are a hard problem).
| orangeyouglad wrote:
| Derek's father is a wealthy property developer from Portland, and
| I'm sure that wealth came in real handy when CDBaby was in its
| growth phase. But Derek doesn't document that in CDBaby's history
| because I guess it doesn't fit with his "persona".
| [deleted]
| Octokiddie wrote:
| > Use an AI face generator to create a completely believable face
| to match your new name. Download it once and use it everywhere.
| Run it through face aging software to use this same persona for
| the rest of your life.
|
| This approach will need a plan for dealing with Zoom. It has
| normalized, in a very short time, the video component of what
| used to be strictly audio - the phone call. If you don't display
| your face, people get mad.
| aendruk wrote:
| Coming soon, and recently discussed:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34622699
| Animats wrote:
| The CIA's retired head of disguise pointed out, in commenting on
| a movie, that you can't really have a drawer full of fake
| personas (the intel community calls them "legends") ready for
| use. Good personas are high-maintenance. They have to have some
| reality behind them - mail drops, email accounts, phone numbers,
| social media presences, even physical offices. Those take time,
| money, and ongoing attention. You can't just create them and box
| them up for future use.
| mxuribe wrote:
| > ...Instead of block and battle, deflect and settle.
|
| I love that appraoch!
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Pfff... people have been doing this online forever, especially
| furries.
|
| Most people don't know who Kayode Lycaon is. I'm quite literally
| a (painted) dog on the internet.
| adenozine wrote:
| I love Derek's writing. He's so casually eloquent, without being
| up his own ass like PG. I've learned a lot from reading what he's
| produced, and I can certainly attribute (in part) a few
| successful endeavors to being a "slow thinker" as he calls it.
|
| We live in such an insane, reactionary world these days and I
| find it very refreshing to hear from people who've clearly
| thought hard about what they're about to say/write.
|
| Sometimes, I even wish HN worked this way. I wish the front page
| was about 10x as slow, and that we could discuss things for a
| week or two instead of a day or two. It'd be messier, but I think
| the fruits, separated from the weeds, would be juicier.
| [deleted]
| behringer wrote:
| Now I want to make a persona a just because.
| xapata wrote:
| The trouble is when you've been using your alternate persona,
| chatting with a stranger, and encounter someone who knows your
| real name that wants to say, "Hello."
|
| "Oh, uh, ... that's my middle name."
| O__________O wrote:
| Yeah, have a friend that opted to stop using their real name
| online. We were on a group call with random strangers and girl
| randomly yelled out his real name when she heard his voice.
| Animats wrote:
| Encountering someone who knows you is one of the big risks for
| people working undercover. Read "You're Stepping on my Cloak
| and Dagger", by Roger Hall.
| hot_gril wrote:
| hot_gril is my real name, honest.
| kibwen wrote:
| "Hush, that's my truename, and there may be witches about."
| xivzgrev wrote:
| Pst, "Derek silvers" - sounds exactly like a fake but believable
| name
| MOARDONGZPLZ wrote:
| This is good advice that does feel borderline unethical. I've
| found that people don't have to be defined by their actual names
| though, they can be defined by activities or what they enjoy or
| want.
|
| I personally have leaned into the latter framework.
| mikece wrote:
| Anonymity is impossible, especially online. About the best one
| can do is to engage in clever obfuscation though there's a
| benefit to creating multiple personas for online activity: it
| makes it easier to keep your silos of interest separated. It's
| not for everyone but it can be handy.
| blfr wrote:
| Why would it be impossible online? You can pay anonnymously for
| Mullvad VPN, or use Tor, or open wifi. It's online that
| anonymity is even attainable.
| mikece wrote:
| And then connect to which accounts?
| onetimeusename wrote:
| What about signing in to apps which often uses a phone # and
| email? Also, betting on Tor is like betting there there are
| no 0-day exploits in browsers or Tor's network. Not a bet I
| would make.
| jacooper wrote:
| You could use email aliases
| ghaff wrote:
| It all depends on your threat model at the end of the day.
| I could create a blog and social media accounts in a few
| hours and, unless I do something stupid, it's going to be
| pretty hard for Joe Random on the Internet to figure out
| who I am.
|
| But if I start writing things that catch the attention of
| the FBI? They'll figure things out quick enough.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| I am assuming you are talking about Tor. This is a
| sophisticated view of things and it's correct. Tor
| provides as good security and anonymity as a public VPN.
| But Onion Routers and therefore Tor were built with the
| intention of protecting against powerful adversaries that
| can perform MITM attacks. You could argue that the FBI is
| an even more powerful adversary I suppose but I think
| there is a mismatch in what Tor was intended to do in
| theory versus what it provides in practice and without
| knowing that you could be making a mistake. So I think
| it's unfortunate that people have to know how to do this
| analysis before making decisions.
| ghaff wrote:
| Really more generally. If I create a blog on Blogger and
| a Twitter account--sure my identity is very discoverable
| by law enforcement, etc. But Joe Random isn't going to
| find it especially easily.
| JohnFen wrote:
| This. If you're trying to hide from governments, that's
| Next Level stuff. You have to be prepared to actually
| live underground, which involves sacrifices most people
| aren't willing to make.
| haroldp wrote:
| You can set up a VOIP phone number that accepts SMS for
| about $2/mo + $0.01/minute.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| yes, I am not saying it's impossible. This is what I do.
| It's just a nuisance and it took me a long time to find a
| VOIP provider I actually wanted to use. But that said,
| I've seen SMS verifiers reject VOIP provider networks.
| rsync wrote:
| 2FA mule:
|
| https://kozubik.com/items/2famule/
| kube-system wrote:
| And those carriers are blacklisted by many apps that
| require phone number verification.
|
| e.g. https://www.twilio.com/docs/lookup/v2-api/line-type-
| intellig...
| jerf wrote:
| As always with a security discussion, it's about threat
| model.
|
| Preventing a random internet person from tying a particular
| nym to you is easy. Fooling a bunch of people is harder, but
| doable. Being a top-tier youtuber would probably be
| effectively impossible.
|
| And if your concern is nation states, well... good luck with
| anything.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonelygirl15
| pr337h4m wrote:
| Worked for Satoshi Nakamoto :)
| zirgs wrote:
| It's not impossible if you don't attract attention of law
| enforcement/intelligence agencies. If you use different
| usernames everywhere and don't reveal private information then
| a random civilian is unlikely to find out who you really are in
| real life.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not convinced that a plausible pseudonym is more privacy
| preserving than something that's obviously just made up. But
| it's not bad advice in general to post personal stuff on social
| media and blogs under a pseudonym if you want to be
| controversial.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Everything I post online, controversial or not, is using a
| persona. I have several, each for certain areas. I've been
| doing this for decades.
| ghaff wrote:
| The thing is that a lot of what I post online is either
| directly or indirectly related to my day job. So I've
| always figured if I was going to have a moderately high
| profile public presence anyway, it wasn't worth maintaining
| a separate identity.
| JohnFen wrote:
| That makes a lot of sense.
|
| My case is different. When I've run my own companies, I'd
| post stuff online related to that. But even then, it's
| under a persona -- I feel it's even more important then,
| actually (I also use personas in real life in that
| circumstance. It's very useful to be able to identify as
| the secretary, the sales guy, whoever, in order to dodge
| time-wasters such as salesmen.)
|
| But if I'm working for someone else, I'm not posting
| anything directly related to my work.
| ghaff wrote:
| >But if I'm working for someone else, I'm not posting
| anything directly related to my work.
|
| Obviously depends on the company and role. I was hired in
| part because I had a pretty big online presence on tech
| topics. (In part, I was writing for CNET at the time when
| they still had some enterprise computing coverage.)
| JohnFen wrote:
| Indeed. In your sort of job, that's a whole different
| kettle of fish.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I'm not convinced that a plausible pseudonym is more
| privacy preserving than something that's obviously just made
| up.
|
| I think that's true, but vibe I got from this was more about
| wanting anonymity _and_ to avoid certain social frictions
| (and maybe not incur a trust penalty). An obvious pseudonym
| comes with certain costs.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Absolute anonymity may be impossible (it's not, actually, but
| it is prohibitively difficult and you have to be highly
| motivated to have it), but useful anonymity is absolutely
| attainable.
|
| The key thing is -- who do you want to be anonymous with?
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| The fact that you take any action to obfuscate your identity
| only makes you stand out more from the herd, not blend in.
|
| It's like wearing a ski mask in a store. Your profile(s) are
| more noticeable even if you're not immediately identifiable.
| SyrupThinker wrote:
| Maybe to some actor that has sufficient data to correlate
| identities.
|
| But if I introduce myself to someone with an alias or claim
| false traits, they will not immediately just know it's fake
| unless they have additional contradicting information.
|
| Most people do not casually wear ski masks, but they tend to
| not lie when asked for a name.
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| We're talking about fingerprinting here. Even a person
| wearing a ski mask could give a name, they still stand out
| because they have a ski mask on.
|
| Deviations from the norm make you stand out, even if it's
| lying.
| SyrupThinker wrote:
| > We're talking about fingerprinting here.
|
| I think the whole subthread is more mixed in terms of
| fingerprinting and social interactions. But if you only
| consider the the former then yes, one would probably only
| care about what I called "resourceful actors" to which
| you would end up standing out.
|
| I was more referring to the social aspect, were if you
| give someone a name they will (usually) not immediately
| assume it is false. Thus giving a false name does not
| make you "stand out" unless there is already other
| information in play. But I'm just clarifying what I
| meant, considering your point was meant for a different
| context.
| uoaei wrote:
| Want to cover your genitals? Make a beer gut not a pair of shorts
| rlt wrote:
| 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)
| zem wrote:
| Banksy is way more famous than Satoshi and has remained
| pseudonymous
| j0hnyl wrote:
| From what I understand art world folks very well know who
| Banksy is, but I don't think such is the case for the tech
| world and Satoshi.
| Adraghast wrote:
| Hardly just the art world. That he's Robert Del Naja (aka
| 3D from Massive Attack) has been semi-public knowledge for
| a long time.
| MrOwnPut wrote:
| I love there's no reference of that in his wikipedia
| article directly, but it appears 3 times in the
| referenced source titles:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Robert_Del_Naja
|
| Out of curiosity, why do you believe it's not Robin
| Gunningham?
|
| That seems to be what
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy suggests, and the
| reasoning seems sound.
| imhoguy wrote:
| Proof? Please
| j0hnyl wrote:
| Banksy is represented by the world's top gallerists. You
| think they don't know who they're doing business with?
| hgsgm wrote:
| Why would they care?
|
| They just have to meet with Banksy's agent.
|
| Knowing who Banksy is puts them at real risk of
| demystifying him/them and lowering their profit.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| its only entertainment that Banksy is anonymous, the fact you
| haven't looked this up bolsters the point
|
| personas are good enough information, it satisfies the
| curiosity well enough to not dig deeper
| vmoore wrote:
| Banksy is purportedly Robin Cunningham. Google is the
| greatest OSINT tool ever created.
| zem wrote:
| that's just one theory. everything i've read lists both del
| naja and gunningham as possibilities at the least, and
| often tosses a couple of other names into the mix.
| thro1 wrote:
| ..and some others making fakes (that's why they 'sign'
| it)
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Anyone who has access to to passenger rosters of flights
| going in and out of Britain can figure out who he is pretty
| easily.
| ghaff wrote:
| Law enforcement/intelligence services involvement raises the
| bar on maintaining anonymity a lot. They can access a lot of
| information that even an army of armchair sleuths probably
| can't.
| rco8786 wrote:
| Banksy
|
| Daft Punk
|
| Deadmau5
|
| Members of KISS (for a while)
|
| Blue Man Group
|
| But if you're following the advice in this article...nobody
| should ever know that you're not actually a real person. So you
| might "know" lots of folks online who are not who they say they
| are.
| philwelch wrote:
| Satoshi also dropped off the face of the internet almost as
| soon as he became famous.
| throwaway4837 wrote:
| 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 change (e.g. using semicolons a lot,
| misusing commas consistently, conventions like S.O.S vs. SOS)
|
| All in an effort to further anonymize your text. The idea is that
| people have different, consistent grammatical habits and
| mistakes, writing, concision, etc. You create a "profile" for
| each identity you want, usually one per account.
|
| Another interesting concept to explore is platform style. Have
| you ever noticed that everyone on Reddit sort of sounds the same?
| People on HN sort of sound the same. I think there's an emergent
| platform-based profile that top comments hover around, because
| adhering to this style is more likely to get upvotes. The hive
| mind is real!
| gbN025tt2Z1E2E4 wrote:
| The social media equivalent of fuzzing basically.
| jimbobimbo wrote:
| I'm surprised to see commenters comparing use of made up personas
| to lying.
|
| There're communities that create/change their personas to match
| how they perceive themselves, encourage their members to
| experiment with presented identities, and expect the society to
| respect and accept presented personas without questioning. I'm
| totally OK with that. How is this different from presenting
| oneself as an alter-ego though?
| wmeredith wrote:
| This is one of my favorite features of 1Password (no affiliation,
| but I've used them for 10+ years and am a fan). They have an
| identity section that you can use to store all kinds of personas
| securely and even use the information to autocomplete forms. With
| the ability to add custom fields, you can easily store more than
| just the standard metadata like name, dob, etc.
| jasonjmcghee wrote:
| Derek Sivers- rare, but believable.
| somecompanyguy wrote:
| been explaining this security policy of mine to people for years
| in different words. when people think they have answers, they
| stop looking.
|
| this is why when you look up my dox or grep for my passwords, its
| not hard to find my fake social security number, address and
| password in the usual place.
|
| in the future i want to build this into a server. What kind of
| server are you? Oh, I'm IIS running ASP (not rlly). send your ops
| down rabbit holes to nowhere instead of depriving them of the
| feedback they rely on. i love it.
| O__________O wrote:
| As a counter example, I have been largely anonymous online and
| offline for awhile; yes, aware it is nearly impossible to be
| completely anonymous, that's fine, largely a "hobby" for me.
|
| Very direct about it, and yes, some people completely shut you
| out once you tell them, but vast majority don't; while my
| opinion, those who do aren't people I am interested in knowing.
| Very similar prior to me being largely anonymous, people would
| ask me what I did, I would respond saying I did nothing, which at
| the time was true and did not feel the need to make something up.
| Oddly, discovered their response almost immediately told me a lot
| about who they are as a person; they might think I am: cool, on-
| the-run, lying, nomad, spy, wealthy, homeless, etc.
|
| As for making personas, long ago I tried that, though now it to
| me feels like lying, especially in context of establishing long
| term relationships. That said, with personas I created, other
| than generic names, I would keep them true to myself, though
| never complete representations of myself. In doing so discovered
| that the variety of personas rarely played a factor in people
| engaging me, but it did appear to make a difference if I just
| happened to contact them randomly in close proximity to them
| having free time.
|
| All and all, being anonymous really is not that hard. Not even
| something at this point I spend lot of time thinking about.
| eastof wrote:
| I'm really curious about the offline piece. If you're at a
| conference or bar and someone asks your name, what do you say?
| O__________O wrote:
| While little odd, it's honestly my position that I don't have
| a name; happy to explain, but that's my position. If people
| are dead set on having a name to call me, just suggest they
| pick a name and that's name we use; for example, today guy I
| have known a few weeks decided I was a "Bob" and we joked
| about it.
|
| It clearly limits options I have, for example, I don't drive,
| but for whatever reason it's hobby I enjoy, one of the few I
| have kept up with. One of reason currently I continue to
| remain anonymous is it is an easy way to engage people on a
| topic that I sincerely believe is important, that being the
| right to privacy.
| lioeters wrote:
| That's very interesting. I for one am intrigued by the
| idea, and will continue thinking about it for sure. Well
| done, nameless one!
| spiderice wrote:
| Unfortunately "the guy who claims he doesn't have a name"
| is WAY more identifying than just giving a generic name.
| Doesn't sound to me like you're anonymous at all. This
| makes me think of the Nate Bargatze bit about the guy with
| two thumbs on one hand: https://youtu.be/Hd31dbJvGaU
| O__________O wrote:
| Yes, you're right that people remember me, but being
| rememberable to me does not make me identifiable; unlike
| the example you provided of having two thumbs on one
| hand, which clearly is an identifiable visible unique
| physical trait.
| erstorreyk wrote:
| https://stylometry.net/user?username=O__________O
| [deleted]
| INTPenis wrote:
| They need to expand their dataset beyond HN, why would I have
| two HN accounts? Maybe if I had a public persona that
| mattered... but I mostly want to be anonymous once to avoid
| issues with my employer.
|
| But if they expanded their dataset to other sites like reddit
| I would be concerned.
| ghaff wrote:
| For me, it's that I generally default to public for
| professionally-related things. But every once in a great
| while I want to comment on something that is obviously
| about my present or a past employer if you know who I am. I
| could certainly just not do that but, given as I did, I
| didn't want it to be under my regular identity.
| O__________O wrote:
| Yep, like I said, I have very healthy expectations of how to
| maintain anonymity. Fortunately GPT will largely fix the
| issue of statistical analysis of variations in writing style
| between one writer and another. Stylometry been around a long
| time, as with all security, you have to know you threat
| model, and adjust accordingly. To my knowledge stylometry
| never made me less anonymous.
| jacooper wrote:
| Assuming your GPT prompts aren't logged
| O__________O wrote:
| Plenty of open source GPT projects, though if you're at
| point of a local machine being trusted, likely have
| larger issues.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Can you give insight into how that top 10 chart
| demonstrates anonymity?
| O__________O wrote:
| Sure, feel free to point out how it makes me less
| anonymous.
| costco wrote:
| Not saying these are necessarily all yours but the
| cluster of accounts O__________O, billme, saycheese,
| wonderous, endlessly, nxzero, v2hle0thslzrav2 are all in
| each others top 5 or so which is usually a sign of a good
| match and unless you are saying that you never revealed
| any identifying info in any of the several hundred
| comments you have made there is likely some loss of
| anonymity. If you used a VPN consistently on one account
| but didn't on one of your earlier accounts then the whole
| point of the VPN goes right out the window if someone say
| gets a subpoena.
| O__________O wrote:
| One of the advantages to being anonymous all the time is
| nothing is tied to an identity; not an IP address, not a
| physical address, etc.
| serial_dev wrote:
| I guess that the rest of the users in the list aren't him
| / her, or the user accounts that belong to this person
| are also anonymous?
| buildsjets wrote:
| stylometry.net is hot garbage. Zero of the candidates that it
| identifies as being related to buildsjets are my actual
| alternate accounts. The DBCooper one is interesting, it
| sounds like a username I might use, but it's still not me.
| ghaff wrote:
| Stylometry is probably mostly useful if you have a small
| number of suspects with a decent-sized public corpus that
| you want to match against a book/set of blog posts etc.
| Even then it's just going to be statistical.
| Kiro wrote:
| 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.
| boring_twenties wrote:
| 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 some kind of bullshit, ideally at least a little
| suspicious but just barely plausible enough to prevent the
| other party from calling you on it right away. This always
| resulted in much more fun conversations than talking about my
| actual work with strangers.
|
| Simply refusing to answer is just not socially acceptable
| outside of venues where anonymity is already the norm, e.g.
| online and IRL hacker cons.
| O__________O wrote:
| Yes, agree, your response reflects my experiences.
| giaour wrote:
| "Tell white lies to avoid awkward conversations" is perhaps not
| the revelation the author thought it might be.
| BTBurke wrote:
| Now no one will believe my real name is Gill Bates.
| EGreg wrote:
| Many people have a hard time believing these folks when they
| introduce themselves:
|
| https://www.facebook.com/a.m.Jain.meenambakam/posts/for-othe...
|
| Or these guys to get elected:
|
| https://www.ranker.com/list/funny-politician-names/nathandav...
| dingosity wrote:
| Hmm. Makes me wonder if Derek Sivers really is his given name.
| Maybe it's a pseudonym? I guess I could email him and ask. And
| before you ask, yes, Dingosity is not the name I was born with.
| chaboud wrote:
| 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.
| geph2021 wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| splitstud wrote:
| Hence the name Skimmington
| neogodless wrote:
| No relation to Skimmington Harbordough?
| geph2021 wrote:
| Haha! I actually missed that... well done.
| O__________O wrote:
| 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
| didgetmaster wrote:
| 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?
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| 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.
| altruios wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| You seem pretty confident in a subjective opinion.
| mlyle wrote:
| We're having a normative discussion and we have our own
| beliefs. It's to be expected.
| jfengel wrote:
| In deontology, lying-is-bad is practically the canonical
| example of a basic rule. Kant especially is famous for that
| -- leading directly to extensive arguments about whether
| "lying to the murderer at the door" is ethical.
|
| It goes deeper than you might expect. There are good reasons
| to think that it might indeed be unethical to lie, even when
| the consequences are bad. I don't necessarily agree with the
| premises involved, but it's worth researching rather than
| dismissing out of hand. Especially since consequentialism has
| problems of its own, and it's a way to get an alternative
| take on the criticisms of consequentialism.
|
| Personally, I'd like to see deontologists accept that lying
| isn't such a great example, and instead take up a different
| one. There can be good deontological approaches that accept
| that consequences can be part of rules.
| jacobmartin wrote:
| 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 fall into the
| natural lawyer camp, below) would say it is per se bad to
| lie, but most would say it is vicious.
|
| The natural lawyer believes that speech has as its natural
| end telling the truth and therefore it is _contra naturam_ to
| lie. See the almost-impossibly-extended discussion here, for
| that: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09469a.htm
|
| For all of these groups, there has variously been admitted
| something like an "equivocal statement"---a statement which
| has some interpretation that is technically true, but not the
| interpretation that the speaker knows will be taken by the
| listener as a falsehood. For example, my friend invites me
| out on Friday and rather than saying I'd rather be at home, I
| say, "I have something going on that night." He takes it to
| mean that I have other plans, but I don't. But technically,
| breathing is "something going on" so I haven't lied. (Whether
| your social relationships will stand your doing this is
| another matter ;))
|
| I'm personally fall in something like the virtue ethicist
| camp, but I do believe sometimes, in justice, a lie must be
| said, and not all of those situations can be covered by an
| equivocation.
| prepend wrote:
| > 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).
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| 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"
| [deleted]
| rzzzt wrote:
| > 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.
| xpe wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The existence of those opposites does not justify a general
| case though, i.e. those limited exceptions are by definition
| limited.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| 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
| RealityVoid wrote:
| 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.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Perfectly understandable, I did not want to pry but found
| it fascinating and could not help myself.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| 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.
| spitfire wrote:
| What is a NOC agent?
|
| National occupation classification? Network operations
| centre?
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I believe that is Non Official Cover Agent. Basically, a
| intelligence agent that, well, they do a lot of stuff, but
| from my understanding, not having worked in the system,
| they mostly handle informants and turn sources and handle
| intelligence gathering. A spy. It's non-official cover in
| the sense that they don't come as a diplomat attache or
| anything of the sorts but go there and present themselves
| as a private individual. Some countries, not sure of the
| case of Canada, you can't share your real job with your
| friends or family but have a cover story instead. They
| mostly present their real name as well, since it's hard to
| produce fake personas, hence... his original post.
|
| Much less glamourous than James Bond, but I believe it's
| an.. interesting job.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| This is a good summary. Most people I knew didn't know
| and if they knew anything it was only a hint here or
| there and most assumed I was doing sigint work.
| bilegeek wrote:
| Don't forget stylometry; though AI actually looks like a
| promising tool to help with it.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| Taywee wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| > 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?
| daniel-grigg wrote:
| 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.
| vehemenz wrote:
| 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.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| Rusty Shackleford, pleased to meet ya
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okN4P2l1QCk&t=45s
| kerpotgh wrote:
| 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.
| rt4mn wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Do you have that reciprocity with every corporation you
| engage with?
|
| I bet not. They all hide behind personas.
| Thorentis wrote:
| > Something can not be immoral if it is the best of a series
| of bad options
|
| Woo, big claim. You're basically saying "best" can be
| determined entirely in terms of utility with no consideration
| for morality. A utilitarian world view, which not everybody
| shares.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _A utilitarian world view, which not everybody shares._
|
| you make it sound like it's not a complete or consistent
| system, but it's just a worldview where only some people
| have the attribute of being in the right, unfortunately an
| attribute not everybody shares.
| prepend wrote:
| I don't think OP made that claim. "Bad" can be determined
| holistically with morals and utility and other factors.
|
| For example, I think it's moral to portray a false persona
| to avoid invasion of privacy.
|
| Not to mention that most people project some level of
| falseness just in day to day operations. For example
| replying "I'm fine, how are you?" Whenever asked.
| akerl_ wrote:
| > 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.
| prepend wrote:
| Of course you can. But you can justify horrible decisions
| with any axiom. It's not like this is a worse approach than
| others.
|
| Is there some rule set you're aware of that if you follow,
| horrible decisions cannot be justified?
| akerl_ wrote:
| I tend to just not invent "rules" out of thin air.
|
| In absence of this supposed "rule", where "Something can
| not be immoral if it is the best of a series of bad
| options", you'd need to actually consider whether a
| decision is immoral. The rule shortcuts that and lets you
| say "well, there's no other option, so I must be in the
| clear morally here", which would be laughable if it
| wasn't so dangerous.
| hgsgm wrote:
| How is "do the best you can possibly do" not (a) a rule
| and (b) not moral?
| akerl_ wrote:
| That's not a quote that appears anywhere prior to this in
| the thread, from what I can see. You seem to have made it
| up from scratch here.
|
| The rule given above is "Something can not be immoral if
| it is the best of a series of bad options". In the
| context of the thread, it's being used to justify
| creating a fake persona and providing false details about
| yourself as part of a strategy of maintaining anonymity.
| And already the cracks start to show: the other option,
| "just don't respond" is classified as bad, and thus
| doesn't count as a viable option. So what you're left
| with is "lie about yourself", which the rule holds up as
| being definitely moral because it's the "best" option.
| But "just don't respond" is only described as bad because
| it doesn't give you maximum anonymity.
|
| If I'm broke, and I need some money for lunch, "steal
| from my richest friend" could be reasonably argued to be
| the "best" of "bad options". I need to eat, it'll hurt
| them the least, so lets crack open their wallet. Because
| I get to arbitrate the option pool and the definition of
| "bad" and "best", I've got a neat package that lets me
| absolve myself of all tricky moral quandries.
| prepend wrote:
| I don't think you can argue that steal from friend is the
| best in that situation. If truly the options are steal
| from friend or starve to death right now, then perhaps
| but that's not realistic.
|
| I'm not sure what you think someone should do rather than
| make the best decision given all options.
|
| There are many ways to absolve yourself of tricky moral
| quandaries. But I don't think using a fake name on a web
| form is a mora quandary.
|
| If we're in a world where the only options are that one
| can't lie about themself online or not participate then
| that's a bad world.
|
| I think it depends on the intent of the lie in that lying
| to get out of advertising seems ok, but lying to trick
| someone into a date seems bad.
|
| Of course it's hard to truly know, so people have to fall
| back do what they think is best and rely on the guidance
| of trusted friends.
|
| This is how morality in general works, I think. And we
| just have societal morals that are widely accepted. I
| think advertising is immoral and unethical, but that's
| not a belief commonly held by enough to make it into
| culture and laws.
| akerl_ wrote:
| Your entire comment here seems to agree with mine. There
| are no quick and easy rules for morality, it's complex
| and case-by-case.
| ianai wrote:
| "The road to hell is (often?) paved with good intentions."
| bdw5204 wrote:
| You can definitely participate in political discourse under a
| pseudonym. The anonymous Twitter account "Catturd" is one
| currently famous example.
| somecompanyguy wrote:
| ethics are for suckers. source : observe the world in 2023.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Let's substitute some of the bits with variables...
|
| "Something can not be immoral if it is the best of a series
| of bad options, and if you want to exist in the world and X,
| the only real option is to Y."
|
| ...and see how this holds up...
|
| X="be rich"; Y="kill your neighbor"
|
| Now, you might object "that's absurdly extreme!". True, I
| have chosen an extreme example, but only because it makes the
| fallacy conspicuous. Ethical principles don't have loopholes
| or dispensations. It's not as if big lies are bad because
| they're big and small lies are okay because they're small.
| They're both bad because they're both _lies_. An evil
| _effect_ of one 's actions may be tolerable under specific
| circumstances, but a means that is inherently evil doesn't
| cease to be evil because you have no other option to attain
| the desired good. Ends don't justify means.
|
| In this case, a pseudonym is not a lie when a) the intent is
| not to deceive but to conceal, and b) there is no normative
| expectation that the name given is real and thus when you do
| not owe others your real name. On social media, while we know
| many might conclude that a pseudonym is real, generally
| speaking, I would say that error is a tolerable side effect
| (it depends on the particular social medium; LinkedIn is
| different than Twitter, for example). However, IMO, things
| start to become more dicey with active fabrication. There is
| a fine but definite line between lying and mental
| reservation. There is a difference between speaking
| ambiguously or evasively on the one hand and lying on the
| other. This places rather severe limits on what you can
| licitly say or express. Constructing a persona means you must
| actively engage in creating a fictional character that you
| intend people to believe is real _as a means_ of concealing
| you identity. This is by definition a lie and different from
| allowing people to falsely infer a persona based on what is
| ambiguous information that is intended to conceal truths
| others have no right to.
|
| "Create and post a back-story to answer (instead of avoid)
| the frequently asked questions."
|
| The article's author's advice is effectively _precisely
| because it involves lying_. Lying works exactly because the
| default expectation based on the essential function of speech
| is to communicate the truth.
| zajio1am wrote:
| > 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 are simple ethical alternatives, just not disclose that
| information, or just avoid that questions. Lying in this case
| is clearly unacceptable.
|
| It is also a signalling issue. There is a universal social
| contract not to lie. If someone is willing to lie in such
| minor issues, then such person is totally untrustworthy,
| because there is no reason to assume they would not lie or
| hold other social contracts in more serious cases when it
| does not suit them.
| akerl_ wrote:
| > If someone is willing to lie in such minor issues, then
| such person is totally untrustworthy
|
| What's the backing for this? If a stranger asks me what my
| favorite color is, I don't feel any particular obligation
| to give them a truthful answer. But at least in my
| experience, that hasn't manifested as a willingness to lie
| or deceive in cases where it matters. I think it's possible
| that your personal social contract is not as universal as
| you think.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| > There is a universal social contract not to lie.
|
| The entire concept of "white lies" existing would indicate
| that it's not nearly that universal.
| deegles wrote:
| I don't agree that your RL identity is a "minor" thing.
| It's right up among the most important things.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| That entirely depends on who you're interacting with and
| the context of that interaction.
|
| Your best friend? I would hope you feel comfortable
| enough sharing your RL identity or deeper secrets.
|
| A random company you interact with? Why would it matter,
| let alone be one of the most important things?
| pessimizer wrote:
| The fact that the first person you mention is "your best
| friend" is an indication of the importance you're placing
| on it. Nobody is using a nom de plume for their electric
| bill, you're being deliberately obtuse.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| I mentioned two extremes.
|
| A best friend, by definition, is one of the people you
| _choose_ to trust the most. If you want to replace it
| with someone else significant in your life, by all means,
| it doesn't change the point in any way shape or form.
|
| A random company is the other end of the extreme, it's an
| example of a very limited relationship.
|
| The point is that the bigger your relationship, the more
| you'd entrust them with secrets. Secrets like your real
| identity. It's a pretty basic and obvious concept.
| jrm4 wrote:
| There is emphatically no "universal social contract not to
| lie," nor should there be, because what this leads to is
| "invisible obligations to parties more powerful than you,
| since you're expected to tell the truth to whoever asks
| it." -- but right to truth ought to be earned.
|
| It is true that it most cases it's not favorable, but the
| way you're putting it is the stuff of repression.
|
| Self defense, it's good to misinform bad actors, Santa
| Claus, surprise parties,etc.
| kortilla wrote:
| Oh really? You're gonna have a hard time with the monsters
| in WITSEC then.
| catchnear4321 wrote:
| Telling you a fake location would likely be an indication
| of a lack of trust, in you.
|
| Have you never told a lie? Should I trust the answer if it
| is "no?"
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > There are simple ethical alternatives, just not disclose
| that information, or just avoid that questions.
|
| That's not always possible.
|
| > Lying in this case is clearly unacceptable.
|
| In _what_ case?
|
| If you're really taking the stance that anonymity is
| _never_ ethically more important than honesty, that 's a
| pretty extreme stance. Are women being stalked by an ex who
| is a cop required to be honest about their identities? Are
| reporters investigating sex trafficking required to be
| honest about their identities?
|
| In a more broad sense, there are many corporations and
| governments out there who follow no ethical rules
| whatsoever and are sucking up as much information on
| everyone as they can. These people don't have any sort of
| right to that information, and don't have a right to my
| honesty. If anything, I think the moral thing to do, if
| any, is to hamper these people's efforts by feeding them as
| much incorrect information as much as possible.
|
| > It is also a signalling issue.
|
| Everything is a signaling issue. Your post, for example,
| signals you as a person who has not-very-nuanced opinions
| about nuanced topics, and therefore can't be trusted in
| nuanced situations. If you wouldn't lie to the police to
| protect a pot smoker, or lie to an advertiser to protect my
| privacy, you aren't an ethical person by my standards. I do
| believe you have good intentions, but intentions that don't
| translate into the correct actions don't mean much.
|
| > There is a universal social contract not to lie.
|
| This is what I mean about not-very-nuanced opinions.
|
| > If someone is willing to lie in such minor issues, then
| such person is totally untrustworthy, because there is no
| reason to assume they would not lie or hold other social
| contracts in more serious cases when it does not suit them.
|
| 1. What issues are you considering minor? You seem
| extraordinarily willing to generalize some specific-but-
| not-described situation you're imagining to all of reality.
|
| 2. There are lots of reasons to assume that someone who
| lies to cops won't lie to me, for example.
| jameshart wrote:
| > hiring a contracter, ..., engaging in the political
| process, holding a job
|
| These are all situations where the desire for anonymity is
| outweighed by the requirement for accountability.
|
| You're aware that 'hiring a contractor' requires _entering
| into a contract_ right? And so does being employed.
|
| Entering into a contract without establishing your identity
| implies a desire not to be bound by the terms of that
| contract. Is that your intent?
|
| As for 'engaging in the political process', I have never
| heard anyone argue that the problem with politics is that
| people are too honest and open. Do we need more anonymous
| political party donors?
| tsumnia wrote:
| > 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.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I don't really bother hiding anything.
|
| Anyone who wishes me harm, can figure out who I am, fairly
| easily. I own a home, and I'm not sure if people know how much
| that exposes folks.
|
| I _want_ people to know who I am. I don 't think that I have much
| bad about me (although a number of folks think I'm a stuffy old
| boomer -they're probably right).
|
| It also helps me to behave better. I was not always a stuffy old
| boomer, and I behaved ... _not like an adult_ ... on the
| Internet.
|
| I'm big on Responsibility and Accountability. I'd like to see
| more of it in others (but am frequently disappointed). I find
| that it's best for me to act like I'd like others to act; whether
| or not they do, is not my business.
|
| I was told "We teach people how to treat us."
| boring_twenties wrote:
| > I own a home, and I'm not sure if people know how much that
| exposes folks.
|
| OT but even more maddeningly, only those of us not rich enough
| to own our homes outright are subject to this stupidity. If you
| don't need a mortgage, you can just buy your home under an LLC
| or other entity. If you do, this becomes difficult or maybe
| impossible.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Well, around here, the tax rolls are public. That's how I
| find out who owns the crack house down the block, etc.
|
| _> difficult or maybe impossible._
|
| For now. There's a lot of movement to expose the Principals
| of LLCs. Too many bad actors hiding behind them.
|
| This is why we can't have nice things.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| I guess it's useful to drive away curiosity from laymen but how
| does it stop corporate knowing me by crosschecking multiple docs?
| For example the banks for sure need my real name and id and phone
| number, all other services need those too.
| userbinator wrote:
| I was reminded of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8336036
| which was in the pre-AI era.
| kaashmonee wrote:
| This is so based. Now I don't know anything anymore is the author
| Derek Sivers from California who now lives in New Zealand even
| real. Is anything on his about page even true? How are we
| supposed to trust it? Then again, it doesn't matter.
| [deleted]
| jimkleiber wrote:
| makes me think of disinformation and differential privacy: too
| hard to hide the truth so fill the space with lies so it takes
| too many resources to find the truth.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| My strategy for this is actually to use other people's names.
| You can try to dig in but if you try to look me up on any other
| website you're gonna be playing the wrong game.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| One very important thing to keep in mind: If you generate a fake
| persona _and_ present it as entirely real, you are being
| dishonest.
|
| This may not matter for inconsequential things like the pen name
| for your SubStack or something. However, it definitely matters if
| you plan to engage in anything serious or do any business under
| that persona.
|
| If you run into situations where you're forced to switch to your
| real identity (e.g. employment relationship, legal matters, or
| even an accidental leak) then you could lose a lot of
| credibility. People will naturally wonder if you were trying to
| hide something from them, regardless of your initial intentions.
| prepend wrote:
| This reminds me of Taleb's story about how he says he's a limo
| driver at cocktail parties.
|
| He chose this to be boring but plausible and move the
| conversation on.
|
| To me it seems like if you dodge the topic of employment some
| people will get curious and dig in. If you say what you do, they
| might be curious and nothing is more boring to me than talking
| about my job to "normies."
|
| I think there's a concept of digitally hiding through being
| normal. Evading Google leaves a black hole around your activity.
| Making a digital "Bob" who just does boring, normal stuff creates
| an ad profile that no one cares about.
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| That is a good approach. My persona is going to turn five years
| old now, but it looks much older. In fact, my persona looks older
| by design, which reduces the need for profile maintenance but, in
| turn, is often targeted for age prejudice. I'm called "old fart"
| many times a week, and it kinda sucks.
| patientplatypus wrote:
| [dead]
| rspeele wrote:
| Art Vandelay, importer/exporter.
| mxuribe wrote:
| That's funny, we have the same name! I must be the next Art
| Vandelay in the phonebook, right under you...But i'm an
| architect! :-)
| class4behavior wrote:
| >Once people start wondering, they need to know.
|
| You're projecting.
|
| >That's a problem if you really want to be anonymous.
|
| Large emphasis on really.
|
| Stop conflating secrecy with privacy. The former is another pair
| of shoes entirely.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| > If you defiantly refuse to say who you are, it can make people
| angry that you're upsetting social reciprocity.
|
| Citation needed.
|
| This entire post/idea seems to be based on "you can't just make
| up an obviously anonymous avatar/username anymore (like
| BakedPotato138)" and I frankly don't see why not. It's been
| working fine for decades. The only people who are upset over this
| are authorities and corporations. And in those cases, making up a
| fake person is quite possibly criminal fraud.
| rco8786 wrote:
| Wait what, the entire post is literally "just go make up an
| avatar/username".
|
| > If you don't want any attention, just pick a very common name
| like Mary Kim or Adam Johnson.
|
| > Use an AI face generator to create a completely believable
| face to match your new name. Download it once and use it
| everywhere. Run it through face aging software to use this same
| persona for the rest of your life.
|
| > Pick a city and say it's your location, to avoid that
| question too.
|
| > For email, Mailbox.org is great, and doesn't care who you
| are.
|
| > Create social media profiles with your new name, email, city,
| and face.
|
| > Nobody will wonder who you are if you answer that question.
| Instead of block and battle, deflect and settle. That's better
| anonymity.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| The entire post is about making up a deceptive human username
| and AI generated human photo. What I'm talking about is
| making a name like rco8786 and using the avatar of
| whatever... a delicious ham sandwich.
|
| There is nothing novel about making up an avatar. The point
| of the article is "trick people by making it a believable one
| so they'll think that's you, and not just an avatar." Ie.
| there's an incredibly important social signal in having a
| name that's obviously not your actual name.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > > If you defiantly refuse to say who you are, it can make
| people angry that you're upsetting social reciprocity.
|
| > Citation needed.
|
| Look around. In this thread there are people who are upset.
|
| > This entire post/idea seems to be based on "you can't just
| make up an obviously anonymous avatar/username anymore (like
| BakedPotato138)" and I frankly don't see why not. It's been
| working fine for decades.
|
| I have had a few obviously anonymous avatars/usernames over the
| years (this isn't one of them--it's actually my real last
| name). There have been a few attempts to doxx me during that
| time.
|
| > The only people who are upset over this are authorities and
| corporations.
|
| Authorities and corporations aren't people (which is important
| because people have rights). But that's an aside really.
|
| The bigger point is that authorities and corporations are made
| up of people, and those people, are often acting on behalf of
| their authority/corporation. In the worst case, they're true
| believers that what their authority/corporation is doing is
| right (i.e., all the people who defend invasions of privacy by
| corporations on hacker news).
|
| > And in those cases, making up a fake person is quite possibly
| criminal fraud.
|
| Not always. For example, with Facebook's shadow profiles, they
| won't even admit they exist most of the time, so they certainly
| aren't going to prove they exist by attempting to prosecute
| someone who feeds them fake data.
| nonbirithm wrote:
| I have lost many potential friends because I chose not to give
| my real name. It gives me some anxiety thinking about whom I've
| lost, but it's a normal thing to respect other people's
| boundaries, and my boundary is that I don't feel comfortable
| with giving my real name to people I haven't met in person. And
| I have ethical reservations to go as far as lying to make up a
| real name just to keep a friendship founded entirely on
| something I'm not comfortable with.
|
| It almost makes it seem like it's wrong to keep the social
| boundaries I have and that I'm doing harm to myself by
| withholding new human relationships just because of my
| discomfort. But I know that if those people are generally going
| to carry those standards then I can't change them, and it's my
| choice to disagree.
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