What's sock puppeting please?

People who do that need to get a life in the real world, Kandinsky. I agree, seriously weird. Funny how these people change online identities and just spout out the same old ,same old. Do they not realise it is blatantly obvious or are they just so up themselves they consider their intelligence is higher than the rest of us?

I think a basic name change is fair enough. Sometimes people think they have given away too much personal information, or that they have been objectionable to others and want to make a fresh start. I can't see the harm in that. Also people lose passwords etc, and can't log in to post under their regular name. Or they take a break and deactivate their account, so have to re-register. Or as mentioned, someone wants to talk about a personal matter without it being connected to their usual user name.

People deliberately changing name so they are not connected with their old ID and can claim never to have said something is a grey area, IMO. I can understand a fresh start, but if someone carries on where they left off but denies their history it is a bit underhand.

Sock puppet accounts are deliberately set up to cause trouble, and are different again. They can, of course, be traced if they share an IP (ie they are the same person posting from different accounts), but if they are different people communicating by text or messaging whilst posting separately it is more difficult, but not impossible to detect. And yes - people do do that, crazy as it sounds. When several apparently new people all claim to have been monitoring a site for a while and simultaneously decide to tell people what they are doing wrong, or 'make a stand' about something that was previously a particular poster's pet topic, it's pretty obvious.

And there I was thinking 'ooh, sock puppets, brilliant idea, I can make some with the DGC next week when they come to stay'! Mmmm, maybe not.

nanna8

People who do that need to get a life in the real world, Kandinsky. I agree, seriously weird. Funny how these people change online identities and just spout out the same old ,same old. Do they not realise it is blatantly obvious or are they just so up themselves they consider their intelligence is higher than the rest of us?

I don't think it should be swept under the carpet so easily nanna8. Not if you value simple veracity and democracy.

Very professional "sock puppets" will have been used to persuade large numbers of Americans to believe Trump won the last election.

People denying truthful information while spreading disinformation damage democracy and trust.

Being a MN and now GN member I thought the IP address controlled name change, am sure it doesn’t allow more than one name under the same IP.
If a poster is banned and comes back under a different IP address then the moderators wouldn’t be able to tell.Other posters would tho!

People can get a VPN and continue to create new accounts. However GN do take notice of reports of obvious serial offenders. Never think you won’t be recognised!

Some ISPs have dynamic IPs, which means that each time you log on you are assigned a different one. That makes tracing difficult (and an innocent poster can be allocated the same one as has been used by a troll or sock puppet an hour before).

Circumstantial evidence is the best admin can hope for sometimes, but there is no right to post here, and if they are convinced that someone is deliberately causing trouble they can ban anyone at their discretion.

Oreo

Being a MN and now GN member I thought the IP address controlled name change, am sure it doesn’t allow more than one name under the same IP.
If a poster is banned and comes back under a different IP address then the moderators wouldn’t be able to tell.Other posters would tho!

In theory you can, eg if you wanted to ask a personal question but not use your normal username.
But it doesn't work.

Change username
You are able to select one alternative name to use for sensitive posts where you'd like anonymity. Please note that you are only allowed two usernames in total

But how?
Do you leave and rejoin?
Can you then rejoin again with your old username?

No. Just use a different email address.

Why anyone bothers to do any of that is beyond me.
I only have one email address.
I feel am not keeping up and have now 😂

I'm not saying I understand it - just that I know how it works.