How are puppeteers caught on this forum?

[Elite Engineer]

How do you catch people who use more than one account? Similarity in post content, IP address?

 

~EE

[pzkpfw]

Possibly not something to discuss in the open?

[Greg H.]

It's the strings. They just follow them from the puppet to the puppeteer.

[Elite Engineer]

Possibly not something to discuss in the open?

Just genuinely curious

[arc]

I would guess that after many years of experience the moderators and even some members have probably developed the skill to pick up subtle similarities in the M.O. of the average puppeteer. In just the few years that I have been here many of the members that regularly post have imprinted their own style of writing that resembles to me a recognisable pattern or "voice".

 

That writing pattern is surprisingly rather hard to break. Your average puppeteer would need to invest some extra effort to hide their identity. And that's rather unlikely, given that the puppet's creation is likely due to laziness and an unwillingness to put in the effort to do good work in the first place.

[swansont]

It's the software that lets us hack into your camera (or use your monitor as a camera) and run facial recognition.

 

 

Kidding aside, I'm not going to divulge the tricks the mods use. But a fair number of tips come from other members of the forum, based on content and style. Most sockpuppets focus on a narrow area of discussion and repeat themselves.

[Delta1212]

I've had to moderate some forums before.

 

Someone who is smart can be hard to catch, it's true, but frequently it's very easy to tell when it's the same person posting under a different account name, even before you look at IP information.

[ydoaPs]

How do you catch people who use more than one account? Similarity in post content, IP address?

 

~EE

Sort of. While IP addresses can be masked, our most accurate way is the AI we've got running in the background. It analyzes users on 42 levels of content and style similarity and metasimilarity. The larger the corpus of posts is, the more accurate the bot is. It's really amazing. It takes up a bit of processing, though, so we don't run it on the same server as the site as it would crash the forum server.

 

Sometimes we just query the matrix. While the bot is fancy and awesome, querying the matrix is often faster.

[Endy0816]

Be serious. We all know Swansont simply checks in PRISM when he updates the time for the NSA.

 

Goggling posts in quotes can unmask multiple accounts as well, if they reuse names.

[StringJunky]

...must learn to remodel my online personality....

 

Most sockpuppeteers have an agenda based around a pet idea that they can't let go of and that's why they keep coming back.

Edited May 19, 2016 by StringJunky

[dimreepr]

As Greg H suggested, follow the strings...

[Phi for All]

Be serious. We all know Swansont simply checks in PRISM when he updates the time for the NSA.

 

We couldn't get the guy in charge of the drones, so we got the guy in charge of the atomic clocks that control the GPS the drones use.

 

I'm not sure we've ever had a puppeteer, someone pulling strings like a marionette. That could be interesting if they coould demonstrate distinct styles of writing.

 

Mostly what we get are sockpuppets, another account so someone has more hands to wave while ignoring calls for evidence. Those aren't hard to spot, in general.

 

It does tickle me when someone joins, posts a thread on some controversial topic, gets some contradictory or unwanted replies, and then suddenly someone new joins to agree with the controversial OP. A quick look at IP addresses shows it's the same person, new account! Being wrong is no big deal, but being dishonest about it is completely different.

[swansont]

Sort of. While IP addresses can be masked, our most accurate way is the AI we've got running in the background. It analyzes users on 42 levels of content and style similarity and metasimilarity. The larger the corpus of posts is, the more accurate the bot is. It's really amazing. It takes up a bit of processing, though, so we don't run it on the same server as the site as it would crash the forum server.

 

Sometimes we just query the matrix. While the bot is fancy and awesome, querying the matrix is often faster.

 

Ixnay on the otbay.

Be serious. We all know Swansont simply checks in PRISM when he updates the time for the NSA.

 

Goggling posts in quotes can unmask multiple accounts as well, if they reuse names.

 

I can neither confirm nor deny that my access level to PRISM would allow for this.

[John Cuthber]

Most people who are clever enough to set up a sock-puppet that's hard to detect, are clever enough not to need to.

[Elite Engineer]

Plot twist: Everyone on this thread is the same person

[swansont]

OK, very recent example. Prophet 12A shows up, discussing the exact same thing as a previously banned member, Prophet 12 (Snell's law of universe expansion/contraction or some such nonsense), as shown by a couple seconds of searching.

 

Not a tough call.

[ydoaPs]

I'm not sure we've ever had a puppeteer, someone pulling strings like a marionette. That could be interesting if they coould demonstrate distinct styles of writing.

We did a while back, but I can't for the life of me remember any of the account names. The puppeteer even had them have little fights. It was a tad odd.

[Klaynos]

I was quite surprised to find out in a recent report that I'm a sockpuppet of phi.

 

It was most disconcerting.

[Phi for All]

I was quite surprised to find out in a recent report that I'm a sockpuppet of phi.

 

It was most disconcerting.

 

But I was able to drink a glass of water while typing both these posts.

[swansont]

I was quite surprised to find out in a recent report that I'm a sockpuppet of phi.

 

It was most disconcerting.

 

 

I though you were a sockpuppet of me.

 

 

It's tough being all the mods.

[Klaynos]

 

 

I though you were a sockpuppet of me.

 

 

It's tough being all the mods.

The hardest part is remembering which I'm posting as and referring too... who am I again?

[hypervalent_iodine]

The hardest part is remembering which I'm posting as and referring too... who am I again?

The real question is who are you not?

[arc]

But I was able to drink a glass of water while typing both these posts.

OK . . . . . . I guess vodka has enough water in it straight out of the bottle, you could say that.

[Daedalus]

Actually, it's more complicated than you can imagine. Swansont, Phi for All, and the other moderators and admins use the infinite improbability bot that was created by Klaynos to detect sock puppet accounts.

The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability by simply hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea) were of course well understood — and such generators were often used to detect violations to the forum's rules by making all the molecules in the OP's undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance with the theory of indeterminacy.

Many respectable admins said that they weren't going to stand for this, partly because it was a debasement of moderating forums, but mostly because they didn't want to see the OP without their undergarments.

Another thing they couldn't stand was the perpetual failure they encountered while trying to construct a machine which could generate the infinite improbability field needed to detect sock puppet accounts generated by the mind-paralyzing posts of the same user from infinite dimensions that exist in accordance to the many worlds theory, and at the end of the day they grumpily announced that such a machine was virtually impossible.

Then, one day, Klaynos who had been left to clean up all these sock puppet accounts found himself reasoning in this way: If, he thought to himself, such a machine is a virtual impossibility, it must have finite improbability. So all I have to do in order to make one is to work out how exactly improbable it is, feed that figure into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot tea... and turn it on!

And that is how the admins and moderators detect sock puppet accounts.

Edited May 22, 2016 by Daedalus