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philh comments on Open thread, Feb. 9 - Feb. 15, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: MrMind 09 February 2015 09:12AM

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Comment author: Viliam_Bur 13 February 2015 09:38:54AM *  5 points [-]

I am thinking about having a small side income, but without advertising to anyone who types my name in Google. The plan is roughly the following:

I will make computer games and publish them on Google Play and/or Steam. To increase visibility, I will also have a Facebook page, and write a blog about making these games. Just for the sake of experiment, I will also make a Patreon and/or Gratipay account and ask for donations. For these purposes, I will use a pseudonym; the same one for all the platforms, to build brand awareness. I will also use this pseudonym for debating programming and games on Stack Exchange, Reddit, and/or Twitter. I will keep this aspect of my life separated from everything else, because I want this identity to appear as a more or less one-dimensional personality: a simple guy who makes games and has absolutely no controversial opinions (e.g. about politics or religion) ever.

The question is, if you have experience with the services I have mentioned, how much anonymity can I achieve while 100% following their terms of service?

To explain my intentions, following all the terms of services is my highest priority. Because, in a hypothetical chance of huge success, I would hate if suddenly one of those website would delete my account for violations of their rules. The anonymity does not have to be perfect; I would be satisfied with the level Scott Alexander has, although the more the better. (I wouldn't bother using Tor to hide my IP address or anything inconvenient.) I just don't want people who know me to realize that this is my project, unless I tell them; and I don't want people who will play my games to effortlessly find who I am and what other things I do online.

What I found so far: Creating a new GMail account is not a problem. It will not even be inconvenient, because it is easy to switch between multiple google accounts; and I can automatically forward mails from the pseudonymous address to my new address, so I will not miss anything. On the other hand, Google Play recently requires developers to publish their home address. Well, without my name there, I could still pretends it was some neighbor in the (unlikely, in my opinion) case someone would notice. Facebook requires real name when making a user account, but allows creating "business pages" which do not display the owner's name. I am not sure about the other services yet. To explain: I do not mind if the website owners know my real name; I just don't want them to display it to any other user.

Has anyone here tried something similar (building a pseudonymous identity using these websites following their terms of service)? Can you share your experience?

EDIT: Okay, thanks everyone for helping me think about it. Now I realize that "selling to people", "legal", "easy", and "anonymous" are not possible together. Usually one has to disclose their identity to people they do business with. There are ways to cheat here; and there are also complicated ways to do this legally. But since I want to stay within the legal framework, and I don't want to spend too much resources on this, then the anonymity will have to go.

I still have an option to use some pseudonym as a trademark, if I decide so -- there may be good reasons for doing so, for example the pseudonym may sound better, or be easier to remember -- but at the end of the day, my real name will be written somewhere in small letters. Most people will not care, most people may not notice it, but if anyone will want to know, they will know. Okay; I can live with that. Again, thanks everyone!

Comment author: philh 13 February 2015 11:25:29AM 0 points [-]

I don't want people who will play my games to effortlessly find who I am and what other things I do online.

This sounds like more anonymity than Scott Alexander has. Scott's real name is easy to work out from reading his blog. What you can't easily do is google his real name and find SSC.

(OTOH, I suspect it wouldn't be too difficult to go from SA levels of anonymity to the level you want. Someone who didn't know Alexander was a pseudonym could probably read much of SSC without ever realizing. Don't quote news articles about your brother, and don't link to other websites controlled by you, and you're probably safe unless you get a determined stalker.)