To think that mumsnet posters should know that anyone can use AI to analyse their posting history

[LostPollypocket]

I understand why a previous thread on this was deleted and suspect another one will be. I did think the thread was doing something very useful though in making people aware that even anonymous posts may not be so anonymous in a world where anyone (or business, crime syndicate, political party, or government) can use AI to pattern match and analyse everything you’ve ever written on the internet, including places like mumsnet where you might post about very personal topics. If you use a particular word frequently, or semicolons in a particular way, or even respond emotionally to certain types of posts, then even with a name change anyone might be able to build a profile on you and connect it to say, archived facebook data, and know who you are, how you think, and what you posted at 3am in the depths of postpartum depression.

Could we not recapitulate any previous arguments on this thread but have the broader discussion on the fact this is possible and important to understand!

Yes and that's why you should RANDOMLY SHOUT in your posts to throw it off the SCENT.

And that's why some of us add the odd lie and change user names. A school boy stole the ip addresses from MN and got the police to do a armed raid after all. AI data scrape is pretty low bar compared to that

Hard agree but if the last one and this one get taken down I would imagine that MN may not want people to know as it could drastically affect there site. Ie it needing a log in to see or access content where as now you only need one to post or access helpful functionality.

I know people always go on about this but I still dont get why me arguing about a jeans style or disagreeing with a MIL post is particularly interesting or of value to anyone at all?

There seems so much paranoia about what you post online and whilst I get some of it (eg posting pics of your kids/when you are going on holiday etc) the rest of it is completely banal, uninteresting, beige claptrap.

I wrote a comment which didn’t get published due to the deletion…

well here it is anyway…

It is kind of a weird thing to do. But Mn is getting increasingly weird with very unsavoury characters around.

I don’t see why normal posters should have to put up with that so it actually could be a good idea to train a chat model to identify bullies & trolls etc.

You could put in specific criteria.
Ie. Posts consistently over and over
demands responses
tries to shape thread rather than just contribute
Is rude / entitled/ belittling/ aggressive etc.

Put in a username before responding to their questions to gauge whether that individual is worthy of response.

I would in the whole agree . However you could when arguing with a user in a political forum dox their entire posting history and find something personal to attack them on publicly or via PM .

Grim but possible

It's a really interesting topic. I think it's possible that at some point, AI might be able to analyse a writing style and scour the internet for matches. Like facial recognition software can. However where facial features are set, writing styles can change or evolve. We might write differently depending on the context, who we're addressing, the platform, our mood, tiredness level etc. I think it's something that could be done in principle, but it would be pretty unreliable in the same way generic AI text checkers are now.

Medical details, political inclinations, mental health issues, area you live in - all useful info to someone

When I previously asked ChatGPT about my MN posts it confidently said that I voted for Farage, which I very much have never done.

How do you know it's not just making stuff up?

If you have 2x usernames try it today. It will analyse the two interrogate the styles and tell you if they are the same person.

If you’re kept the two separate ie holidays and feminism it will see if you truly have if you haven’t it will see trends and tell you if it thinks they are the same when you know they are

But Mn is getting increasingly weird with very unsavoury characters around.

This is Mumsnet in a nutshell.

No idea why someone would take the effort to do this. Mumsnetters just aren’t that interesting

Same here. I am pretty open, but I never disclose anything private, like names, addresses, post childrens pics etc.
If I was on Facebook or other social media platforms (which I am not), I imagine someone could find a lot more about me than they would on here (though I doubt anyone could be that bored)

Head over to the CITME board. People are sitting ducks posting on there.

If you give chatGPT the question "are these 2 posters the same person" it may get the right answer yes/no simply by chance.

If you test it on yourself, you will know if it gave the right answer, but anyone else, how would you know if it's right?

AI is very good at confidently giving completely wrong answers, it could confidently dox the wrong person (which is also a concern of course).

That's not to say it isn't possible using trained models, and isnt a big concern for the future, but testing it on yourself today using chatGPT tells you nothing.

May as well flip a coin.

Exactly! You can find out far more about a person from what they willingly post online I bet, on social media!

Of course someone could trawl through your posting history to find ammunition, but they could also rummage through your rubbish bin or take a photograph of you buying loo roll. The question is whether there's any realistic reason to think anyone would bother.

By this rationale, noone would be online at all- eg what if they hacked your amazon account and found out you were buying potentially embarrassing personal items - this applies to all online activities not just MN

I got chatgpt to analyse my personality based on all the usernames I could remember. It struggled to go back to my early days but what it did come up with was enlightening. I don't think many commonly available models are big enough to analyse all of Mumsnet posting history and link usernames based on posting/writing style so I wouldn't worry about that being a concern but if someone had a list of usernames they could find out a lot.

Yes, that is true, but I make no judgement of you.

Look at Cambridge Analytica. That’s peanuts compared to what’s already possible. And if you have an anonymous profile here and have previously deleted a publicly accessible facebook or twitter account, you’re very likely to repeat yourself somewhat, whether that’s tell the same story, make the same spelling mistake, use the same slang, or mention the same life details. There is already at least one person who seems to try to elicit identifying information on mumsnet, there were quizzes aimed at doing the same on facebook back in the day. All of that is information that someone will want to use, and unregulated(and -able) mass manipulation is already a feature of politics and commerce. It can get so much worse.

And if a political party can do that for pennies per person?

But what, specifically, is the political party doing with this information? Targeting me with political advertising? Political campaigns already use data to target audiences, so I'm not sure the hypothetical revelation that AI can analyse online behaviour is quite the bombshell it's being presented as.

Cheap data analysis doesn't automatically translate into meaningful power over the people being analysed. What is the actual harm you're arguing is likely to occur?

You understand why your threads were deleted, yet here you are again making another one?

What's your agenda OP? You definitely have one.

Hmm, im not so sure about big data. I suspect it contains a fair amount of utter shit that's not true abd the vast majority is not interesting to anyone.

A good reminder to not go into personal arguments on line about controversial topics which is a rule I stick to IRL. Someone in a club was arguing about politics. I make it a rule to never discuss with anyone. I occasionally talk politics to my eldest but its so inflammatory to most people. So to add to me my big data shit soap I Vote SNP lib dems labour conservation and the greens all at once at every election.

I once read a zombie thread on which I'd posted back in 2011 without realising it was zombie. I read my own post and thought "god what a load of bollocks" and then realised it was me that had written it 😂