Sockpuppeting and bad bystander effect

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Next to the journal about psychopatic individuals and psychopathic mentality & behaviour, I'd like to put attention on another form of abuse that is also happening these days. A psychopath or an anti-social individual doesn't act alone, especially when it comes up to the online community. He/she can soon gain followers who join him freely or are manipulated into the perpetrators web of manipulation and abuse. A psychopath himself can be a very skilled puppet-master. The other form is related to his/her bystanders (also called bad Samaritans).

It is called a bad bystander effect and some use their real identity (meat puppet) or create accounts with different names which is called sockpuppeting. The meat puppet is an individual recruited by the existing member (puppet-master) to support their position. 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, themselves 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, to manipulate public opinion, 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 attempt to block sockpuppets.

Types of sockpuppets

Ballot stuffing

Sockpuppets may be created during an online poll to submit multiple votes in favor of the puppeteer. A related usage is the creation of 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 (read more here). 

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.

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 in use before the Internet existed, 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 Wikipedia 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/she is actually a separate individual (i.e. "meat") rather than a fictitious creation.

- Source: Wikipedia articles Sockpuppet (Internet) and Sybil Attack
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motherearth01's avatar
Thank you for the awareness!