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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2365 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 14, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Are you sure about the "no statistical or information theory backing" part? Even if they don't provide a good explanation, their worries are valid as deanonymization is rather easy. Sufficiently advanced information theory mathematics may as well be magic, by the way

I hate to be the "source" guy, but source? Give me a few good papers to read and I will potentially change my mind. I have yet to receive any. It doesn't have to be a paper, just anything at all.

Key search terms "stylometry" and "social media":

Using publicly available data, our best model, a combined temporal-linguistic one, was able to correctly match the accounts of 31% of 5,612 distinct users across Twitter and Facebook.

Does sub 50% accuracy impress (scare) you?

Yes, because the baseline for "randomly guessing" is 1/5612 ("twitter user @fluffyporcupine matches this specific one of the 5612 facebook users"), not 1/2 ("twitter user @fluffyporcupine is/is not the same user as facebook user Nancy Prickles").

Doesn't scare me for personal reasons -- I'm trivially identifiable, you don't need to resort to fancy ML techniques. But if you're actually trying to remain anonymous, and post under both your real name and a pseudonym, then perhaps it's worth paying attention to (e.g. spinning up separate throwaway accounts for anything you want to say that is likely to actually lead to significant damage to your real-world identity and doing the "translate to and from a foreign language to get changed phrasing without changed meaning" thing).

https://gwern.net/death-note-anonymity#de-anonymization

These 18 references (under that large paragraph) scare me a little, what about you? I have personal experience as well, but not at some impressive level that I can write about. It's just a general savviness which has taught me that most people are safe because bad actors lack interest or competence, and not because finding them is impossible

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