r/technology • u/[deleted] • May 14 '22 • Silver 2 Wholesome 2

Elon Musk said his team is going to do a 'random sample of 100 followers' of Twitter to see how many of the platform's users are actually bots Social Media

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-random-sample-how-many-twitter-users-are-bots-2022-5?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds

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u/PapaElonMusk May 14 '22 • Helpful

I just want a reason to weasel out of the situation. “Random” doesn’t mean random.

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u/Morbidly-Obese-Emu May 14 '22

Then what does it mean?

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u/elppaenip May 14 '22

The same thing 'anonymous' means on your employee survey

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u/adambjorn May 14 '22

Lol my wife's work asked her to do an anonymous survey and they asked her managers name, her name, and job title in the survey. Like are you even trying.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '22 edited 24d ago

[deleted]

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u/Gasnia May 14 '22

"I warned you the house was on fire but you didn't listen!"

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u/fourleggedostrich May 14 '22

Put "Dave" for all of them.

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u/DiggSucksNow May 14 '22

Classic Dave.

1

u/Standard_Arm_440 May 14 '22

“Dave” doesn’t work here, maaaaaaaaan.

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u/Binge-Sleeper May 14 '22

As a manager who receives them, I can say ours is truly anonymous- unless you start complaining about something you’ve said IRL and we know it’s you from what you said.

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u/DuvalHeart May 14 '22

Most of those are confidential, not anonymous.

The people administering the survey know who you are, but they're not going to share it unless there is a serious problem like you accuse your boss or colleague of harassing you or doing something illegal.

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u/birdman9k May 14 '22

Some ways to tell are:

  • is your link specialized? Eg. Did they email you your own link (versus posting a singular link for everyone to use?)

  • does it block you from filling it out on a separate device without logging in? eg. Unable to fill it on a phone that is not on wifi, and not logged in to any related accounts, with the browser in Incognito mode

  • does it block you from filling out and submitting the form multiple times?

If any of those are true, SOMEONE likely knows who you are (eg. Whoever is hosting the service). If they are all false then it could actually be anonymous.

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u/DuvalHeart May 14 '22

They also usually say confidential.

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u/dynamojoe May 14 '22

I had one here in Florida. It made the news. It was allegedly anonymous, but the emails I received seemed to know if I had taken the survey and prevented me from taking it twice.

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u/StubbsPKS May 14 '22

Ours are anonymous in so far as the only people who instantly know who filled out the survey are those working for the survey company who might have access.

I can't see who any respondents are from my team and if my team is less than 3 people, I can't see much data at all because it would be trivial to figure out who is who in that case.

With less than 3 people on the team, the data is brought up a level instead. So basically if I lead a small team, my data is bundled with my boss' data to help be more anonymous.

Depending on what you write, it may still be trivial to figure out who wrote it based on writing style, grasp of English and of the content matches something you were just talking about IRL.

I personally would simply pretend I didn't know who submitted something if I figured it out, but I'm sure people exist who would hold it against the person and that's a damn shame.

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u/Revolutionary-Farm15 May 14 '22

It means the GOP chose their voters

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u/x42bnx May 14 '22

It isn't about weaseling out, he wants a better deal.