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Revision as of 12:41, 27 July 2013

A sockpuppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception. The term—a reference to the manipulation of a simple hand puppet made from a sock—originally referred to a false identity assumed by a member of an internet community who spoke to, or about, himself while pretending to be another person. The term now includes other misleading uses of online identities, such as those created to praise, defend or support a person or organization, or to circumvent a suspension or ban from a website. A significant difference between the use of a pseudonym and the creation of a sockpuppet is that the sockpuppet poses as an independent third-party unaffiliated with the puppeteer. Many online communities have a policy of blocking sockpuppets.

The term "sockpuppet" was used as early as July 9, 1993, but did not become common in USENET groups until 1996. The first Oxford English Dictionary example of the term, defined as "a person whose actions are controlled by another; a minion," is taken from U.S. News and World Report, March 27, 2000.

The history of reviewing one's own work under another name predates the internet. Walt Whitman and Anthony Burgess were both famous for having reviewed their books under pseudonyms. Another famous example was Benjamin Franklin.

Examples of sockpuppetry

Conrad Black

Conrad Black, chief executive of Hollinger International, posted messages on a Yahoo Finance chat room using the name “nspector.” He used his postings to attack short sellers and blame them for his company’s stock performance. Prosecutors provided evidence of these postings in Black's criminal trial where he was convicted of mail fraud and obstruction. The postings were raised at multiple points in the trial.

Orlando Figes

Orlando Figes, an award-winning historian who has written extensively on Russia and the Soviet Union wrote reviews on the Amazon.com website under the names "orlando-birkbeck" and "historian" praising his own books and condemning those of fellow historians Rachel Polonsky and Robert Service. The two sued Figes and won monetary damages.

Michael Hiltzik

American reporter Michael A. Hiltzik was temporarily suspended from posting to his blog, "The Golden State," on the Los Angeles Times after he admitted "posting there, as well as on other sites, under false names." He used the pseudonyms to attack conservatives such as Hugh Hewitt and L.A. prosecutor Patrick Frey—who eventually exposed him. Hiltzik's blog at the LA Times was the newspaper's first blog. While suspended from blogging, Hiltzik continued to write regularly for the newspaper.

Stephen Leather

Stephen Leather, one of the UK's most successful fiction writers, was also found to be using many pseudonyms to praise his books. Among Leather's numerous books are "False Friends," "Hard Landing: The First Spider Shepherd Thriller," "Inspector Zhang Gets His Wish," and "Short Fuses." "You build this whole network of characters who talk about your books and sometimes have conversations with yourself … I have friends who are sockpuppets … One person on their own, difficult to create a buzz. If you’ve got ten friends, and they’ve got friends, and you can get them all as one creating a buzz, then hopefully you’ll be all right," Leather told the UK Telelgraph. Leather claimed: "everyone does it."

John Mackey

In 2007, the CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey, was discovered to have posted as "Rahodeb" on the Yahoo Finance Message Board, extolling his own company and predicting a dire future for its rival, Wild Oats Markets, while concealing his relationship to both companies. Whole Foods argued that nothing that Mackey did broke the law.

David Manning

David Manning was a fictitious film critic, created by a marketing executive working for Sony Corporation to give consistently good reviews for releases from Sony subsidiary Columbia Pictures.

John Rechy

John Rechy, who wrote the best-selling 1963 novel City of Night, was caught writing numerous reviews of his books giving them five-stars on Amazon.com. A computer glitch in 2004 revealed the names of many authors who had written reviews of their books using pseudonyms. Rechy, who was a winner of the PEN-USA West lifetime achievement award, was one of the more famous authors caught.

Lee Siegel

Lee Siegel, a writer for The New Republic magazine, was suspended for defending his articles and blog comments under the user name "Sprezzatura." In one such comment, "Sprezzatura" defended Siegel's bad reviews of Jon Stewart: "Siegel is brave, brilliant and wittier than Stewart will ever be."

Example of governmental sockpuppetry

In 2011, a Californian company, Ntrepid, was awarded a $2.76 million contract under the auspices of US Central Command for "online persona management" operations with the aim of creating "fake online personas to influence net conversations and spread US propaganda" in Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto.

Strawman sockpuppet

A strawman sockpuppet is a false flag pseudonym created to make a particular point of view look foolish or unwholesome in order to generate negative sentiment against it. Strawman sockpuppets typically behave in an unintelligent, uninformed, or bigoted manner and advance "straw man" arguments that their puppeteers can easily refute. The intended effect is to discredit more rational arguments made for the same position. Such sockpuppets behave in a similar manner to internet trolls.

Meatpuppet

The term "meatpuppet" (or "meat puppet") is used as a pejorative description of various online behaviors. The term was current before the Internet, including references in Ursula Le Guin's science fiction story "The Diary of the Rose" (1976), the alternative rock band Meat Puppets, and the cyberpunk novelist William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984). Editors of Misplaced Pages use the term to label contributions of new community members if suspected of having been recruited by an existing member to support their position. Such a recruited member is considered analogous to a sockpuppet even though he is actually a separate individual (i.e. "meat") rather than a fictitious creation. Wired columnist Lore Sjöberg put "meat puppet" first on a satirical list of "common terms used at Misplaced Pages," defining the term as "a person who disagrees with you."

Nevertheless, other online sources use the term "meatpuppet" to describe sockpuppet behaviors. For example, according to one online encyclopedia, a meat puppet "publishes comments on blogs, wikis and other public venues about some phenomenon or product in order to generate public interest and buzz"—that is, he is engaged in behavior more widely known as "astroturfing." A 2006 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education defined a meat puppet as "a peculiar inhabitant of the digital world—a fictional character that passes for a real person online."

Ballot stuffing

Sockpuppets may be created during an online poll to submit multiple votes in favor of the puppeteer. A related usage is creating multiple identities, each supporting the puppeteer's views in an argument, attempting to position the puppeteer as representing majority opinion and sideline opposition voices. In the abstract theory of social networks and reputation systems, this is known as a sybil attack.

A sockpuppet-like use of deceptive fake identities is used in stealth marketing. The stealth marketer creates one or more pseudonymous accounts, each one claiming to be owned by a different enthusiastic supporter of the sponsor's product or book or ideology.

Legal implications of sockpuppetry in the United States

In 2008, 49-year-old Missouri resident Lori Drew was prosecuted and convicted in Los Angeles for creating a MySpace account on which she claimed to be a 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans. Drew's goal had been to create a relationship with Megan Meier, a 13-year-old girl who had been in conflict with Drew's daughter. After "Josh" ended the relationship with Megan, Megan committed suicide. Drew was convicted for misrepresenting her identity, in violation of the MySpace terms of service. The Los Angeles U.S. Attorney successfully claimed that this was covered by federal computer fraud legislation against "accessing a computer without authorization via interstate commerce." Drew appealed the verdict, arguing that her use of a false identity did not constitute unauthorized access to MySpace, based on a 1973 breach of contract dispute where a court of appeals ruled that "fraudulently induced consent is consent nonetheless." On July 3, 2009, the appeal was tentatively upheld.

In 2010, Raphael Golb was convicted on 30 of 31 counts, including identity theft, criminal impersonation, and aggravated harassment, for using multiple sockpuppet accounts to attack and impersonate historians he perceived as rivals of his father, Norman Golb. Golb defended his actions as "satirical hoaxes" protected by free-speech rights. He was disbarred and sentenced to six months in prison but remained free on appeal on $25,000 bail.

See also

• Astroturfing
• On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog
• Online reputation
• Passing (sociology)
• Shill

References

1. "Definition of sockpuppet". WordSpy.com.
2. Stone, Brad (July 16, 2007). "The Hand That Controls the Sock Puppet Could Get Slapped". New York Times.
3. A legitimate pseudonym is sometimes termed an "alt," short for "alternate identity."
4. Dana Rollins (July 9, 1993). "Arty/Scotto:". Newsgroup: Groups Google Groups. 248375@AUDUCADM.DUC.AUBURN.EDU. Retrieved June 3, 2009. ... one is merely the sock puppet manifestation of the other... {{cite newsgroup}}: Check |newsgroup= value (help)
5. OED, online edition, June 2011 (accessed August 18, 2011). The reference is to one Jennifer Brand, a 24-year-old student who backed President Clinton in 1996, by calling Gore ‘a sock puppet.’
6. ^ Amy Harmon, "Amazon Glitch Unmasks War Of Reviewers," New York Times, February 14, 2004. Cite error: The named reference "New York Times" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
7. "Name that Ben," PBS.
8. Richard Lea and Matthew Taylor "Historian Orlando Figes admits posting Amazon reviews that trashed rivals", The Guardian, April 23, 2010
9. "Orlando Figes to pay fake Amazon review damages," BBC, July 16, 2010.
10. Weiss, Michael (Friday, April 21, 2006,). "I Spy Your IP". Slate. Retrieved 27 July 2012. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
11. Howard, Kurtz (April 21, 2006). "Los Angeles Times Yanks Columnist's Blog". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 27, 2012.
12. Jake Kerridge, "Do Consumer Are RJ Ellory's faked reviews the tip of the iceberg?," UK Telelgraph, September 4, 2012.
13. Martin, Andrew (July 16, 2007). "Whole Foods Executive Used Alias". New York Times.
14. John Horn. "The Reviewer Who Wasn't There." Newsweek web exclusive. June 2, 2001.
15. Aspan, Maria (September 4, 2006). "New Republic Suspends an Editor for Attacks on Blog". NY Times. Retrieved June 11, 2007.
16. Cox, Ana Marie (December 16, 2006). "Making Mischief on the Web". Time. Retrieved March 30, 2007.
17. ^ Nick Fielding and Ian Cobain, "Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media", The Guardian. March 17, 2011. Retrieved March 24, 2011.
18. Thomler, Craig (April 27, 2011). "Battle of the sockpuppets," Government in the Lab: The Online Magazine for Government and Politics Around the World
19. Le Guin, Ursula (1976). "The Diary of the Rose". Future Power: A Science Fiction Anthology. Random House. p. 17. ISBN 0-394-49420-2. Retrieved April 31, 2011. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |editors= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help)
20. Nayar, Pramod (2004). Virtual Worlds. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. p. 123. ISBN 0-7619-3228-3.
21. Česky (February 21, 2008). "Misplaced Pages policy on meatpuppets". Misplaced Pages. Retrieved June 5, 2009.
22. Lore Sjöberg (January 4, 2009). "The Misplaced Pages FAQK". Wired. Retrieved June 5, 2009.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
23. "meat puppet Definition: TechEncyclopedia from TechWeb". The Computer Language Company. Retrieved July 28, 2012.
24. Read, Brock (October 9, 2006) The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Wired Campus Attack of the 'Meat Puppets'
25. Ahrens, Frank (October 7, 2006) Washington Post Emerge as Internet's Effective, and Deceptive, Salesmen Page D01
26. Sweney, Mark (May 21, 2008). "Should stealth marketing be regulated?". The Guardian. London. Retrieved May 23, 2010.
27. "I'd Love This Product Even If I Weren't A Stealth Marketer". The Onion. December 14, 2005.
28. Tossell, Ivor (December 4, 2008). "Cyberbullying verdict turns rule-breakers into criminals". Globe and Mail. Toronto, Canada: CTVglobemedia.
29. "Lori Drew is a meanie". Slate. The Washington Post Company. December 3, 2008.
30. Zetter, Kim (December 15, 2008). "Lori Drew Files New Bid for Dismissal on Grounds that MySpace Authorized Access". Wired News. Condé Nast Publishing.
31. "Lori Drew cleared of MySpace cyber-bullying". Sydney Morning Herald. July 3, 2009.
32. "Dispute Over Dead Sea Scrolls Leads to a Jail Sentence" (November 18, 2010) New York Times
33. "NY lawyer gets jail in Dead Sea Scrolls case" (November 18, 2010) AP.

External links

• Sock puppet at Jargon File

• Internet terminology
• Internet trolling
• Deception