Show HN: Anonymize HN – a Chrome extension to anonymize Hacker News users | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Anonymize HN – a Chrome extension to anonymize Hacker News users

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45 pointsdanthelion56 comments

I wrote a small Chrome extension that allows the user to replace all usernames on Hacker News with either the string `anonymous` or a deterministic hashed value.

Open articleView on HN

Interesting idea! Presumably you pay a lot of attention to who has written a comment and want to remove that bias? In my case I usually don't recognize the author for any given comment so I don't really have that problem.

Yes, that was precisely the motivation! (+ some interest in learning how to publish a Chrome extension).

Always interesting to hear how others do things. There are only a handful of usernames that I know, but when I look for them it's important because (for example) they are the author/creator of a tool. From just a couple minutes ago for example, reading the Elixir post[1] the comments from josevalim are from the creator of the language, and the author of TFA. Not knowing that I think would make the thread a lot different (IMHO in a bad way), but I can definitely see the appeal of anonymizing other times.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37122006

Maybe the extension should also randomize the ordering of comments. Because I can infer that the top comment is more likely to be from someone influential in the space.

Sometimes I read a comment that I completely disagree with, but then I recognize the username and it's someone well respected on HN. So I enter a cycle of self doubts; "Am I out of touch? No, it's the HN elite that is out of touch."

I got in the habit of rarely looking at usernames unless there's some self reference.

It’s definitely the latter, on average. The number of times I am forced to care about a city I don’t live in that also happens to be in the Bay Area where people’s problems are eerily similar to mine except they make 20x more money and forgot that it’s not very classy to brag about such things…

Don’t get me started on all the Ivy League circle jerking that goes on here. Again, I didn’t have the privilege to go to an incredible school. And yet, I have now worked with many who did and found not much there, aside from wealthy friends and overconfidence.

Depends on the viewing platform, but HN usernames are usually small font and low contrast compared to comment text. I think most are unlikely to notice who said what.

I only recognize https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=todsacerdoti everywhere and always get reminded to hope they are not increasing Pipedream pricing again ;)

It would be vrry interesting to clone and repurpose this extension to show tags next to known users from a centralized database. Example's of the tags would be "mod", "{name of tool/library/language} author", "expert in {area}", "CEO of {comapny name}", etc.

I like the idea, but honestly I very rarely pay attention to usernames here.

Do people recognise usernames on HN? I would be surprised if anyone remembered or recognised my username on HN and added any association to my comments.

Yeah, I remember a few people by their usernames. Mostly users who share the same interests as me.

I remember seeing you on the EleutherAI Discord I think

Well, you do happen to be searchable...

Yes, I do remember a few people once I read their handles, like this guy [1].

[1] https://kidger.site

Usually not, but it happens that I recognize the username of someone I've met before, or authors of specific tools. Of course, this works only for people who use a their name or a similar username in other places.

I certainly don't associate people with their previous comments on HN.

Some usernames do show up quite often, especially the ones who ended up here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders

I recognize some recurring usernames, but don't necessarily associate them with anything outside the context of HN.

maybe like 5 people, including dang.

If you asked me to name them though I wouldn't be able to, but when I see their comments I remember them. Interesting how that works.

Tangentially, I always found the discussion flow on image boards interesting because of the "anonymous chorus" of replies.

It creates special patterns: cryptic references to spot non-initiates, people role-playing a straw man and replying to themselves, shunning people using confirmed user names, etc. There is jargon for all of this but it is too offensive for this venue.

I kind of like the threadID system that some boards use. Unfortunately(?) the ones I frequent are too tame for it to get enabled.

Two amusing related things:

- https://github.com/roshan/hnncnn (no comments and usernames on the front page)

- https://stylometry.net/ (no longer works, but stylometry for various HN users - it was pretty good!)

Might be interesting to combine with:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30668137

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/441566-hn-avatars-in-396-b...

Description:

The concept is to use HN usernames as the seed into a deterministic avatar generator. This generator is built from the famously simple xorshift32 PRNG, which both provides a random variable for the image generator steps, and "pseudo-hashes" the seed string to provide the initial PRNG state using a non-linear step (adding each codepoint - which is likely not very robust against collisions compared to proper hashing algorithms, but is simple and good enough).

And do away with the username, but still keep an avatar based on their username to make it easier to follow the flow of a thread.

If they also seeded with the post ID, you're cooking.

Basically turns it into 4Chan with tripcodes. Technically you can re-use your tripcode but the community there really really looks down on doing that (or used to, I haven't been there in something like a decade).

To what purpose? To make a new avatar for every new comment, regardless of poster?

No, you would have the same avatar under a post (so it is grokkable who is replying to who), but your avatar would differ between posts.

The tree within HN is "post > thread > comment", no?

There is a lot of use in having the same avatar within threads and across threads, but I don't see much use in having the same avatar across posts. All it leads to is point farming, echo chambering and bandwagoning.

Many times I see well-known users with recognizable usernames offer insightful comments. They are very knowledgeable, well-informed and polite. Many times however, if someone else dares to go against this user with an equally valid well-informed polite countercomment, groupies of said recognizable user will nuke those comments into deep grey, purely because it goes against their god and he must be right.

You see this across all subcommunities that have a point system and usernames. People lose sight of the content and will blindly follow whoever is the most well-known person within that community.

Something like Reddit, but with the value-judging system of imageboards would be a godsend.

Interesting! I haven't seen much of that behaviour myself, but I see your point.

Counter-point: being downvoted maybe isn't so bad? I'd rather express my (controversial) opinion and be downvoted than stay quiet to avoid scrutiny. Being a person out in the world means sometimes being criticised.

Like others I rarely pay attention to the username, except all the "famous" people on HN you just can't miss when they are posting. But I think you mean psuedonimyze? Because you can easily tell who is posting using stylometry or just human brain pattern recognition.

Wait. Who are the famous people on HN (other than Dang, because he's the only one I recognize. . . ). What and who am I missing?

pg comes to mind? https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg

also the occasional founder/CEO who may comment on some story related to their company

In Go posts I always look for rsc messages. Which is Russ Cox from Bell Labs and Google.

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rsc

https://swtch.com/~rsc

Also Rich Harris, creator of Svelte and SvelteKit:

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rich_harris

Redis creator chimes in from time to time:

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=antirez

There are more I'm sure.

Exactly. I would also add josevalim creator of Elixir, who I actually Ctrl+F for on Elixir-related threads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=josevalim

I can only think of jgc, hardmaru and karpathy as people I see around here more than once

Used to see nickpsecurity a long time ago, I hope he's OK. The creator of the D language and John Nagle are also very active around here.

The thing is that the people doing things in this world do not write comments. Elon Musk is a rare exception.

I follow F1 and I imagine Lewis Hamilton and how he spends his day. He has better things to do than to chime in on F1 forums.

It is as simple as that, people that are famous for achieving things are not going to waste their time on forums.

What I do find amusing is how many HN extensions there are in the Chrome store. If I was at university then I would write one too - the simplicity of the format begs for some styling and whatnot.

They write comments and even chat, not every successful person is arrogant or considers themselves above even talking to regular people.

Paul Davis (programmer) is around here somewhere. Maybe not a household name, but he's got a Wikipedia page. I remember because someone challenged him on his level of experience as a programmer, and then someone else linked his Wikipedia page.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36931617

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=PaulDavisThe1st

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Davis_(programmer)

You might recognize some of https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders

I always look for comments by bcantrill (hi Bryan!) whenever the topic seems like it could receive its attention.

I really love hearing him speak, particularly when he loses it and rants against stuff (bonus points if “stuff” is Oracle)

I don't wanna stoke anyone's ego. But there are people whose work I've used or refernced many times that pop up on HN and comment or post. Not always with a ton of karma either.

Nice. Another suggestion is to randomize message order (so removes top voted bias) and to perhaps un-gray downvoted messages.

It would be fascinating to see some data on grayed messages. I know in my case I look for them so that if I feel they are unfairly downvoted, I can vote them up. I would bet 50% of them I end up voting up, usually because they were downvoted for having an unpopular but not invalid opinion. If there is anybody else out there like me, then the gray could be a net positive because it prevents unfair downvotes from killing a comment unfairly.

But I could also see myself being in a minority and the effect of the gray is compounding. So seeing some data would be really interesting.

I stopped at "a chrome extension", if you are using chrome, you shouldn't care about anonymity

For some reason, on this site usernames rarely matter to me. I know only 1 or 2 people by username.

Is this also for Firefox?

Only Chrome, might check out how to port it when I have some time.

It could probably be done using uBlock.

  Right-click a username above a comment

  Block element

  Paste the following in the text box
  
  ## td > table > tbody > tr > .default > div > .comhead > .hnuser
  
  Click the Create Button

Confirmed that works. Added to "My Filters" Thankyou

    # HN Username
    news.ycombinator.com## td > table > tbody > tr > .default > div > .comhead > .hnuser

That would be a good addition to LetsBlockIt [1]

[1] - https://letsblock.it/filters/tag/hackernews

Done. Well, issue opened.

I try my best to treat every forum like /b/. All people are is what they just said. I'm not having a conversation with an individual, I'm having a conversation with a venue. I'm grabbing the floor and addressing the chair.

I bet if HN went forced anon, it wouldn't make much of a difference in posting and upvoting patterns.

I disagree. I get a regular stream of people referencing my past comments (like days or weeks before on entirely different subjects). I think this only really applies to highly active posters with opinions that stick out though.

I would definitely use this extension if it were written for a real browser instead of googlestuff. It wouldn't help with others behaving based on identity but I like the idea.

That's interesting. I have never had anyone reference my prior comments. Maybe it's because I don't say controversial things? I wonder what the difference is.

I've had people reach out to me because of past work I've talked about on here. Mainly potential startup founders looking for opinions/feedback.

The only time I ever look at someone's post history is if they are interesting, insightful, or famous(ish) (and use their real name).

For local industry celebrities, like geohot, Jeff Barr, patio11, or select few from https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders, people track what they say, or at least I do, simply from having run across their sometimes prolific comments, and get a sense of their views on things, even if the exact wording gets forgotten. So when they say something out of character, it reflexively seems weird enough to go back and check.

I get that too (rarely), but almost always from real creeps who are trying to find something they can use to dismiss my opinion on something dumb they said. Otherwise, people just drop me nice emails.

I don't do it on my end, though. I really only care about what was said, and I'm addressing anyone who is reading.

I honestly would drop the word "you" from all of my replies, except sometimes things can sound ruder when I drop it than when I don't. Like criticizing in the third-person somebody standing right in front of you.

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