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by zodPod 2905 days ago
I always kind of wondered if something like this (the way the title describes it not the way it actually went) wasn't theoretically possible using similarities in writing styles. Like I have several different accounts on some social media sites and make posts and comments on each one for different purposes. But I suspect that, if they were each analyzed based on how things were worded and word frequency and a few other things, they could at least be assumed to be linked together.
2 comments

Theoretically is the key word here :) Here is an article from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17486376

If you look at the charts, their 3 techniques couldn't accurately disambiguate between two authors. If you like, whatever, use a lot of superfluous, unnecessary words, or whatever, you might get clustered into, like, the group of people who do that or whatever. But unless you have a really unique way of writing, I wouldn't worry too much.

IMO, after reading a bit on nlp, I think sensationalized headlines which the research doesnt live up to the headline are far too common. I suppose this might be science in general: http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive_print.php?comicid=1174

Exactly what I thought they did.