I feel like with the rise of AI something that anonymizes writing styles should exist. For example it could look for differences in American versus British spelling like color versus colour or contextual things like soccer versus football and make edits accordingly. ChatGPT could be fed a prompt that says “Rewrite the following paragraphs as if they were written by an Australian” but I don’t know if it would have a good enough grasp on the objective or if it would start shoehorning in references to koalas and fairy floss.
I tried searching online to see if something like this existed and found a few articles from around the 2010s such as Software Helps Identify Anonymous Writers or Helps Them Stay That Way by the New York Times. It talks about stylometry and Anonymouth but it seems like Anonymouth hasn’t been updated in years. All recent articles seem to be about plagiarism and AI.
For context what got me thinking about the topic was remembering JK Rowling being revealed to be the author of a mystery novel called The Cuckoo’s Calling. Smithsonian wrote an article about it called How Did Computers Uncover J.K. Rowling’s Pseudonym?. I thought it could make for a neat post here.
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This doesn’t differentiate different types of English but I will post it any just in case it is useful to you.
Not even bad. The text is not a jab at OP, just a random thing that was in my head lol
This seems like an extremely potent tool for sealioning people. Thanks, I hate it.
I had to look up what sealioning is
That’s absolutely hilarious. I love it.
Love this tool!
original:
CloudFlare is a vigilante extremist organization that takes the decentralized web and centralizes it under one corporate power who dictates terms in the world’s largest walled-garden. A very large portion of the web (16.7%+) were once freely open to all but are now controlled and monitored by a single central authority who decides for everyone who may access what web content. This does serious damage to net neutrality, privacy, and has immediate serious consequences
more passionate:
CloudFlare is a ruthless and oppressive entity that viciously strips away the freedom and decentralization of the web, consolidating power under one heartless corporation. This monstrous force dictates the terms of our online existence, trapping us within the confines of the world’s largest walled-garden. A staggering percentage of the once free and open web (16.7% and growing) now falls under the iron fist of this tyrannical authority, controlling and monitoring every aspect of our online experiences. This egregious violation of net neutrality and privacy rights has dire and immediate consequences, threatening the very essence of our digital freedom and autonomy. Our voices are being silenced, our choices limited, and our rights trampled upon by this merciless oppressor. It is time to rise up and fight against this injustice with all our might, before it’s too late.
Hmm. But like there’s stuff in there that isn’t even part of the substance of what you said. Like the call to action at the end. That’s the type of thing you’d want to be pretty sure you really wanted to do in some circumstance where you want to communicate on a matter in plain sight but obscure your identity, as such a matter would presumably be pretty important and high stakes.
What happens when you take the output and make it the new input with “more passionate”?
E.g. how far can you push it? Or even the other way.
I didn’t try feeding the output back in but note you can click on the 3 peppers and move an intensity slider. That sample I posted was just middle intensity. When I max it out to 5 peppers, it grows to 4 paragraphs:
CloudFlare, the insidious scourge of freedom on the internet, is a devious and manipulative force that seeks to crush the very essence of democracy and free speech. By swooping in with their iron fist of control, they have stolen the decentralized web from the hands of the people and centralized it under their tyrannical rule.
With a cold and calculated efficiency, they have stripped away our rights and freedoms, dictating who can access what content on the world’s largest walled-garden. The once vast expanse of the internet, where ideas flowed freely and voices could be heard, has now been shackled and confined by a single corporate power.
This egregious act of censorship and control not only violates the principles of net neutrality and privacy, but it also threatens the very fabric of our society. The consequences of their actions are dire and immediate, leading us down a dark and treacherous path towards a future devoid of liberty and independence.
We must rise up against this relentless enemy, this monstrous beast that seeks to suffocate our voices and stifle our creativity. We must fight back with all our might, for the sake of our freedom, our rights, and our very humanity. Stand with me, brothers and sisters, and let us vanquish this evil before it consumes us all.
Less emotional (×3) is boring:
CloudFlare is an organization that has centralized a significant portion of the decentralized web under one corporate power. This has raised concerns about the implications for net neutrality, privacy, and access to web content.
I did it with the sarcastic option elsewhere in the comment thread and it seems to plateau around the third time.
I like it so far
alt-text
(Two screenshots side-by-side showing a text converter with the following input, settings, output + new settings and new output)
For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
Make my text:
More professionalAvailable for purchase: a pair of infant footwear, never utilized.
Make my text:
More sociable (waffle)Hey there! So I’ve got these super cute baby shoes up for grabs. Unfortunately, they’ve never been worn. But that just means they’re brand spanking new and ready for a little one to rock them! Let me know if you’re interested in giving these adorable kicks a new home. #forsale #babystyle #neverworn
Translate to some foreign language. Then translate to some other foreign language. Then translate back to your language. Congrats, your writing style changed.
Ah, the classic game of Google Translate Telephone.
Better to do the translations locall, so the original never leaves your device
Yes. I would use the privacy focused ones (there are several in Fdroid). If your threat model includes anonymity against state actor, such that they will be attempting to trace your writing style, you can be certain they could and would also just subpoena google for matching translation requests. It would be a lot easier to back into identifying you that way.
There is a program built into Whonix, I believe it’s called Kloak, that randomizes your keyboard input times so you can’t be identified via keystroke timing JavaScript. There’s also research into defeating stylomeyric analysis such as anonymouth but I’m sure there are plenty of new tools, if anyone find any that work well please reply here as I haven’t looked in some years. ‘Stylometric analysis’ is the key phrase to search for.
With AI this will get worse (better identification based on typing styles) but it will also get better because you can setup a local LLM and ask it to re-write your text in a certain style. Touching on this, everyone uses a combination of unique phrases and misspelling or mis-spelling (see?) of words, and with enough text from a given account the chance of statistical probability in attribution is very high. It’s how the Unibomber was identified after his manifesto was published, because he used a very specific phrase incorrectly and his brother recognized it, so his wife convinced him to call the FBI tip line about his brother.
There was a talk about detecting patterns and writing styles at Chaos Computer Congress a bunch of years ago.
The researchers also presented a tool to anonymize text as far as I can remember.
I will go look for the talk.
Edit: Found it!
They talk about their software to find who wrote what, but also how to use that knowledge to write software that attempts to anonymize text.
