Throwaway accounts / anonymous posting / temporary personas
Edit: whoopsie, already being discussed here: https://tildes.net/%7Etildes.official/2x3
This is tangential to this post here about NSFW/controversial content. Sometimes one needs to make a confidential post detached from their own identity (say for example about a psychological problem or advice on an event where the OP wants to conceal real identities), and most places one needs a throwaway account. I think it'd be nicer if we allowed people to make posts detached from their main accounts w/o having to create new throwaway accounts. It might be possible via allowing a certain number of "personas" (i.e. a couple names one can allocate and use as nicknames), or via allowing to post anonymously (i.e. hiding the poster's account name, not w/o one), or allowing personas but temporarily and randomly generated names. What's you thoughts?
Thanks, both you and @Kom. Do you think I should delete this?
No problem at all man, tagging users doesn't notify just yet. So if someone doesn't reply when you @ them that is why.
Don't remove the post, as Bauke said it's good for new folks to see this thread then more folks can put their thoughts and feelings forward
Thanks!
If you can still edit OP to point to the earlier refs, I'd recommend that.
If you mean making this a link post that points to https://tildes.net/%7Etildes.official/2x3, I just tried and it seems to me that I can not do it. But if someone has the privilege to do it (maybe @Deimos), that's totally fine with me.
Deimos is considering allowing anonymous posting. Give me a sec to find the link.
I gotcha right here
Somewhat related, are we allowed to use our invite codes to create alternate accounts? (Presuming we following the CoC of course.) If I ever share any of my writing here I think I'd like it to be separate from my "main" account.
If you're trying to use an anonymous account to get around effective admining and moderation, I'm not entirely sure this site is for you. It destroys the entire premise of reputation and user trust.
I asked Deimos, in his discussion about posting anonymously, who could see the connection between my "Algernon" account and a hypothetical anonymous post I might make. Here's his response:
To me, that says moderators will never be able to see who made an anonymous post. It would require one of the developers to manually interrogate the database to see the connection. I therefore assume this would be done only in extreme circumstances, such as if someone started posting illegal content, or started disrupting the website's operations.
I have an impression that even this wouldn't satisfy your requirements, but it's still much more restricted than moderators being able to track the owners of anonymous posts.
The history / link would be discarded after 30 days per @deimos's earlier comments.
Though yes, this is a brokered anonymity.
The admins can track your IP address though, so a throwaway won't help. You could try a VPN, but to be able to post, you need Javascript enabled, and they could plant a JS bug if they wanted to, or simply prohibit VPNs altogether....
A what?
Ah RIP. My original idea was to use Javascript to force a request to a dedicated server (or virtual machine even) that could log the IP addresses of people who connect, but I realize that obviously that wouldn't work because it'd just go through the VPN, I don't know what I was thinking. However, Tildes could still perhaps attempt something like a DNS leak; or perhaps they could try to keep track of a collection of statistics like screen size, battery life, and try to identify you this way. My point is that if you don't trust the admins, it'd be quite difficult to ensure your anonymity if they wanted to figure out who you are...
The anonymity is for detaching your persona from the post, not for using the site as a paste bin. If one wants complete anonymity, you can only trust a throwaway anyways.
What if ~tildes provided free temporary accounts to do this with. For instance, every 24 hour period, 3 or so open 'personas'. Once a post is made, whomever posted using the account could use it for a certain period of time, before the account expired?
Seems like an invitation for bot activity. If the anonymous post is not spawned from an existing, legitimate account, there's no reason to trust it, given current technologies for automating abuse.
I hope this follows the rules, but I wanted to re-visit this discussion, considering the conversation is over seven years old.
I personally would like an anonymizing feature, or the okay to make throwaway accounts. Personas are a trickier topic for me, but it feels like at the current size and scale of Tildes, community moderation and soft-official moderation, work to police if these features would be abused.
Can you explain how this would be different from using one of your available invitation codes to make a throwaway account? I haven't wanted to, but that would be my approach.
I agree with the using your personal invites to create anonymous accounts approach. It solves a lot of the moderation issues that come from complete anonymity too.
Users have 5 invites to give out, so if they make alt accounts to make posts that would get them banned, they only have a few chances before they run out of new accounts to make.
Tildes also completely removes deleted posts, accounts, and deleted comment data 30 days after deletion. If you want something removed from Tildes servers, it really is. You can remove a post you made on a throwaway and a month later, it’s basically a brand new account. It would be difficult to use posts and comments to figure out who controls the account IRL if the account owner was diligent about deleting their content.
I have no issue if this is the official stance, "use one of your invites to make throwaways", but I'd prefer to ask for permission first, before forgiveness. From the thread I read (albeit, skimmed), it seemed there was no consensus.
For a problem that does not yet exist, but was raised in the comments in the OOP:
Another point brought up in the old threads was, it wasn't "truly" anonymous, because of the internal tracking, but I'm personally less concerned about that.
Personas are a different can of worms. Does not need to be opened at this time, unless there is interest, IMO.
As I understand it it's okay to have alt accounts, but never sockpuppets. Never vote on, label, or reply to any of your other accounts. That's about it, really. If you're found to be manipulating votes or conversations etc, all your accounts will be banned. Otherwise no worries, create as many personas or whatever as you want. Just never cross the streams.
Edit: I just realized another nuance. Never use multiple accounts to farm invites. The connection between your account and your invites is something I think is preserved eternally, not purged after 30 days. My advice is if you're going to have alt accounts never use the invite codes on those accounts. If you legit need more invites on your main account ask @cfabbro for more.
Interesting. How so?
How are personas abused?
Wait, do we have them already?
Regardless, I suggest asking the OP. I'm here to learn. No opinion other than concerns about anonymity as a weaponizable device.