
Is Ghislaine Maxwell secretly one of the most powerful Redditors of all time? - chris_overseas
https://www.inputmag.com/culture/is-ghislaine-maxwell-secretly-one-of-the-most-powerful-redditors-of-all-time
======
devit
There are about 10^10 Internet users, so if we think it's very unlikely that
it's her (10^-6 chance compared to anyone), that gives a 10^-16 prior chance
of being her.

Assuming that they post almost every day and miss a day every few months, the
probability of missing a single day for a random user is probably around
10^-2, so if the account didn't post during her public activities for around
13 times, that gives a 10^26 Bayes factor and thus we can conclude it's her or
someone intentionally trying to frame her with 1 - 10^-10 > 6 sigma equivalent
certainty.

Obviously a more precise analysis is possible.

~~~
dragonwriter
> her or someone intentionally trying to frame her

Or someone in her orbit/employ who has a radical change of lifestyle and
priorities as a direct consequence of the arrest, or...

(Neither endorsing not challenging the basic analysis, just suggesting that
one must enlarge the scope of “noncoincidental possibilities” besides Maxwell
personally or a frame attempt.)

------
gzu
[https://www.reddit.com/user/MaxwellHill](https://www.reddit.com/user/MaxwellHill)

Hasn't posed in days

~~~
lowmemcpu
The entire sidebar of that is "Inciteful Link" awards. Is Reddit really
rewarding users when they "incite"?

~~~
catalogia
[https://www.reddit.com/wiki/trophies](https://www.reddit.com/wiki/trophies)

> _Inciteful Link - Submit something worthwhile but provocative_

I think it's a pun on "insightful". Reddit likes puns.

------
tootie
I'm kinda shocked the evidence lines up, but it still seems so incredibly
improbable. Like why the hell would she have any motive at all to do this? And
if it's really her, what difference would it make?

~~~
simonkafan
I can think of a trivial motive: Pastime.

Bill Gates loves to play Bridge, Warren Buffett enjoys playing Ukulele and
Maxwell likes to spend time on Reddit.

But I agree, it makes no difference.

------
s9w
Certainly the dominating topic these days in certain parts of the net. My
personal pro and con for this theory:

pro: The timings are conspicuous. This absence right now as well as that
during an earlier known event (the chans found that). Also the aggressive way
Reddit admins react to this aligns with similar happenings in the past that
turned out true.

con: I just can't imagine her using an account so similar to he real name, and
just browsing Reddit all day. Also the content isn't quite as suspicious as
one might expect from such a person.

------
ideals
I read through the r/conspiracy threads yesterday and some people broke down
the posts and they're basically your run of the mill left leaning redditor.
Other than the couple 7yr old posts about the child porn and pedo stuff
everything looked like a normal internet obsessed person. hard to explain that
pedo stuff away tho, but also 7years ago and only a couple posts doesn't sound
like the pattern of a mastermind pedo ring organizer that Maxwell is.

This just feels like a reaching for grapes moment especially so when the
person's account has been active in the last 24hrs

------
aray
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

This evidence seems weak at best.

I want to be charitable, but hard to imagine this is anything other than an
incredible stretching to make a topic to generate lots of clicks/views.

~~~
aliswe
the following comment is besides your point. I apologize in advance for this.

In my opinion, that first statement is very bad. What classifies an either
claim or evidence as extraordinary?

The claim "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." itself is
extraordinary and would be in dire need of something backing it up. Not
extraordinary perhaps, but still.

------
siegecraft
Makes me curious what stylometric analysis would say.

~~~
trappist
She is British and this redditor doesn't write or spell like a Brit, not that
this qualifies as analysis.

~~~
siegecraft
I meant take a corpus of her known writings and compare them to the redditor
to see if they matched up.

------
ProAm
Please tell me it's GallowBoob

~~~
simlevesque
it's a r/tech and r/worldnews mod named MaxwellHill.

the proof is paper thin IMO.

~~~
ProAm
Yeah the articles states as much. I dont see this as newsworthy though? Would
people be surprised if she also had a FB account? There are plenty of rich
sleezy powerful/influential people with social media accounts.

~~~
benologist
The newsworthy part is the user in question has been a prolific submitter and
moderator for a decade, not simply the existence of an account but the
influence they've had over many subreddits for many years. The evidence is not
conclusive that the reddit user is that person.

------
kirstenbirgit
If I was /u/Maxwellhill, I'd just stop posting to troll all these people

------
catalogia
> _The conspiracy theory that Ghislaine Maxwell is an elite user of Reddit_

Supposing the woman does have a reddit account, what makes that a
"conspiracy"? Between whom is any conspiring happening? Is it also a
conspiracy that I have a HN account?

