Comment by probably_wrong 6 months ago
You are correct about the second point - I'll strike it through once I find out how.
As for the anonymous part, that's why I wrote "with style-detection and deanonymization tools". If the Internet could find Shia Labeouf's flag in a day [1], could they find a reviewer based on their writing?
[1] https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/4chan-shia-labeouf-secret-l...
Plausible deniability will satisfy who exactly? The Sherlock Holmes of Reddit did a great job with the Boston marathon bombing.
You don’t have to actively demonetize your reviews, you just have to prime your audience ahead of time that your ~~election~~ publication was stolen and they’ll do the rest.
This is giving tinfoil hat vibes - I would guess style detection has such a high false positive rate as to be near useless. Also there's nothing stopping people from publishing reviewer comments today and letting the Internet run wild with "style detection" (or doing it themselves).
This is a concern I have as an "anonymous" HN account, even up to putting it in quotes despite never revealing my name or strong PII. But the language I use as a reviewer is pretty different, even from that of a writer. I suspect this will be harder due to low sample rates but then again, high noise could help your point. Mobs need targets more than accuracy.
Though, we do eventually need to have a conversation about deanonymization of online accounts. That's not a thing we want to be done so easily
The difference is that as a scientific reviewer you are not hiding a physical location and what you need is plausible deniability, which would still exist. In addition to this, actively attempting to deanonymise your reviewers is on the level of scientific misconduct that your employer and professional organisation should consider taking disciplinary action against you. I am not arguing that this makes it entirely safe to publish anonymised reviews and that we will not affect reviewer behaviour (maybe for the better in some cases, as "one-sentence reviews" will be something in the public record), but it is in stark contrast to the example that you bring up.