Sockpuppeting

[thepastinsidethepresent]

Just seen a thread’s been pulled due to this. I thought it had been made physically impossible to post under more than one username on a given thread? Is the term ‘sockpuppeting’ also used on here to describe when someone gets their mates to post in support of them, or something? Puzzled… 🤔

It's possible if you have multiple accounts, i.e. registered to different email addresses.

You could still do it if you have more than one email address and use different Mn IDs on different devices.

I know I once approvingly nodded at what I then realised was a post by me on a years-old thread in What We're Reading which someone had revived. I'd lost access to an old email address in the interim because it was linked to a mobile I'd had when living in another country and no longer had.

A lot of pro Israel accounts have been caught out on the citme threads. Some of them even forgot to change and agreed with themselves. Embarrassing.

OK… although presumably MNHQ can see it happening via someone’s IP address, so I’m guessing some of these people are posting from different locations as well as different email addresses?? Talk about dedication, if so… 😄

VPNs I'd imagine.

Such a shame the idiots ruined it for the rest of us - it was fun to be able to namechange on threads.

In what way fun? (Genuine question, I don't think I've ever seen a thread where it looked like that was happening.)

And I hadn't thought of VPNs, duh. 😄

The thing I can't ever get my head around is who can be arsed to go to such lengths? What do they get out of it, and what is missing in their offline lives to drive them to engage in such pointless behaviour?

Back in the day we used to have a little chuckle changing our names if something funny came up on a thread. Quite often there'd be loads of namechanges referencing it as a sort of ongoing joke.

Not a big deal to be without it, of course, but it's always a shame when the actually disruptive and/or horrible antics of the few ruin things for the rest of us.

Here was stupid old me thinking about the things with sewn on buttons

There is nothing too stupid or pointless for a human to do. This is the conclusion I've reached as a result of being alive for 64 years. The first time I ever came across sockpuppeting was probably over 20 years ago on the BBC messageboards, which they closed down eventually, probably with a huge sigh of relief. A person who had been posting a lot on The Archers messageboard suddenly posted to say that she was appalled at what she'd done, she didn't need to be told she was an awful person etc etc but as well as posting under Username1 she was also the person behind Username2, who had often posted on the same threads and they had replied to each other. She then left and both accounts were closed. It was very, very odd, and one of the things that reinforced for me that you have to take everything you read online with a huge pinch of salt. Nobody knows who anybody else is or whether anything they say about themselves is true.

Sorry didn't manage to quote your question, @thepastinsidethepresent, to which the above is my answer.

Humour was much more a driving principle in the distant past. Troll posts would sometimes be left up just because they were really funny/witty/not doing any harm, and nobody minded that it clearly wasn't real - everyone was having a good time with it.

I just like the gentle humour of a punny/funny namechange that's relevant to a particular thread (easily pleased 😁).

Hi @thepastinsidethepresent

Thanks for asking about this. As others have said, while you can no longer post under different usernames on the same thread, very dedicated trolls will keep trying to find ways around our blocks. So if you suspect that someone is sock puppeting, please hit the report button so we can take a look behind the scenes. We won't go into detail about the ways we can spot if someone's a PBP, but rest assured we'll take action if we can see that someone's up to no good.