15 ms·

The HB Gary Email That Should Concern Us All (Sockpuppet Management Software)

326 points by ph0rque 16y ago

wybo 16y ago
Faking dozens of personas online gives a whole new meaning to the phrase 'we are legion'. Scary indeed.
scrollbar 16y ago
I've always assumed this kind of psyops has been used by, if not govt agencies, PACs or private entities. Digg commenters in particular.
bediger 16y ago
Ha ha! The leak that blows the sockpuppets/trolls wide open! We knew this day would arrive, and it finally did. But the bigger question: why didn't dailykos.com link to the Aaron Barr email in question? I ask for two reasons. First, it seems kind of Mainstream Media of them to not link to it. Trying to keep us on your site, Kos, or is this one of those "sensitive" things that must be kept out of the common man's hands, a gatekeeper function that newspapers used to exercize? Second, I want to find out more about the Persona Management Software. It seems like an opportunity for an open source project.
- Vivtek 16y ago
  It's just a diary - the author probably just didn't think of linking to the mail, or read it elsewhere. It shouldn't be too hard to find. I was totally thinking it would be fun to do this as open source, though. Giving propaganda tools to the common man!
- GHFigs 16y ago
  The leak that blows the sockpuppets/trolls wide open! Could you elaborate on this? The article only talks about ideas contained in Word documents.
  - bediger 16y ago
    Elaborate on this? Certainly. Visit a website that allows comments, and posts articles on controlversial topics. Say, techdirt.com or groklaw.net. Read all the comments for 10 articles. You'll quickly come to the realization that a number of the differently-named identities repeat a large number of the same ideas, concepts and talking points. But all these differently-named identities have different habits of usage. Maybe one of them can't be bothered to use the shift-key, like e e cummings. One of them is named "Darryl" and posts rather rambling comments. A few of them are anonymous cowards. But over the course of a few weeks diligent followers of the comments in a blog see that all the trolls start using the same talking points at the same time. Maybe a phrase like "rich user experience" shows up in all troll comments one day. A few weeks later, any number of people chime in with "I love linux as much as the next guy, but Microsoft has a great product this time." What I mean by "blows the sockpuppets/trolls wide open" is that this revelation finally explains how a site like Groklaw.net or techdirt.com can attract such a large number of persistent detractors. Sockpuppet/Persona Management explains how a single person can create a large number of different trolls with different writing characteristics, different vocabularies, but all with the same point of view.
    - GHFigs 16y ago
      This is just an alternative explanation for an observed phenomenon. Actual human beings are entirely capable of reduction to repeatable talking points and strangely fanatical persistence given the right framing and environment.
    - SatireBot_2 16y ago
      Hey Bruce, What you're talking about? Can you provide examples? Wagg-ed is the best damned social media program on planet earth! Oh yeah, and be sure to check out the new edition of Windows CE. Keep Rocking. ____________ Sent from the year 2937 from my Windows Galactic Mobile Handset WebCommunicator 7 edition.
bugsy 16y ago
The Chinese government has the "50 cent army" which is a 300,000 strong persona ops set. Many are Chinese students in the US who are required to post pro-China posts while in school and pretend to be a random western sympathizer. This is the largest and most organized, but there are tons of these and you see them on all the major boards. Can identify them when there is something really indefensible and they are in defending it with statements like "Well, as far as I know, none of the Wall Street companies broke any laws. So if you are concerned, maybe you should blame the government for deregulating." Their accounts are full of certain themes that enable you to identify them. At first I typed up here techniques on how to recognize them but on second thought I don't want to give them ideas on how to correct. Of interest to me right now is whether this propaganda war can be widely unveiled. It's hard since there are likely thousands of different PR ops posting stuff so there's no single pattern, and it's subtle to distinguish between this and zealous and sincere advocates of things. It would also be pretty easy to dismiss zealous advocates as PR ops as an attack strategy against advocates. Maybe that will eventually mean sincere advocates will end up having to blog more with their real name and photo to be taken seriously.
- bugsy 16y ago
  Thinking about this some more. Anonymity is required for democracy to work properly. Citizens of a society need to be able to speak candidly without fear of reprisal. That's just the way it is because power attracts the corrupt and the corrupt will use their power to silence dissent. Egypt could not figure out all of who was posting things against the government, so they just shut down the whole internet to try to stop anonymous speech. In the US there seems to be more control of networks and Palintir is a defense contractor that sells software to figure out who is talking to who and what their real identity is. I am sure Palintir will be making lots of sales to governments right now that don't want to see the middle east revolutions that are occurring right now happen in their own tyrannical dictatorships and corporatocracies. The HBGary scandal involves multiple companies, not just the token one (HBGary) which has been "thrown under the bus" as a sacrifice and distraction. This is going on right now in other companies as well, so punishing HBGary doesn't slay the dragon. Corporations and governments are gaming the anonymous free speech system by astroturfing, persona management, sock puppetry etc. There are armies of people posting fake opinions in an effort to manipulate public opinion and steer it towards agendas which are not sincerely held by the people posting them. They are posting only because it is their job and they are being paid. This activity is very destructive to democracy because it alters things from being the true will of the people. It is tantamount to election tampering. It is critical that the public develop a response to this in the form of tools for identifying this activity. One excellent tool is Anonymous's randomly discovering and the publishing incriminating emails. This activity is beneficial to democracy. However, its success is highly dependent on random chance and luck. It is also very illegal. Right now law enforcement is doing everything they can to track down the people who uncovered the wide spread and insidious wrongdoing. Punish the whistleblower is probably not going away. The public also needs tools which are legal to use. There are efforts right now to "build a new internet" that preserves anonymity and thus free speech. That is good but more is necessary. Another thing which is needed is for Palintir-like systems which can peek behind the scenes, uncover connections between posts, patterns of posting and patterns of speech, to be written and open sourced. These systems can be used to identify sock puppets. They can also be used as a weapon to unmask the anonymous and attack free speech, but they are already being done to do that. We need these tools on both sides now to level the playing field.
unsigner 16y ago
Somehow the left considers the Internet their backyard, and are extremely surprised and offended when opponents dare to play with "their" toys.
- locopati 16y ago
  Can you expand on your comment to explain how it makes any sense?
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    Many people who know me consider me to be "left" but it makes sense to me. The Internet is just a medium. It doesn't favor any particular viewpoint. There's this idea from summer movies that the "good guys" are always hip with the new tools. That's not true. If anything, it does tend to be the underdogs or insurgents that are the early adopters, but this status has nothing to do with "good/bad" or with any particular political affiliation.
  - hristov 16y ago
    Unfortunately, the "explanation" feature is not built into the sockpuppet software yet, it is still in alpha, but I am sure in a 6-9 month period you will be able to get some kind of vague generic explanation.
    - CamperBob 16y ago
      I can hardly wait until the CAPTCHA is replaced by the Voight-Kampff test.
- invertd 16y ago
  Would you make the same comment when they turn and use their "toys" against you?
- mquander 16y ago
  Can I take it, then, that you like the idea of federal contractors spending taxpayer dollars on semi-automated sockpuppets in order to spam propaganda on their behalf, as long as it's not liberal propaganda?
jcromartie 16y ago
What's more amazing is the USAF solicitation for bids on this kind of software. They say it's for use in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Florida.
- imajes 16y ago
  that'd be where they'd observe it from, or whatever other neutral ops outside of the theater of war is; not that they intend to use it against florida.
  - jcromartie 16y ago
    I understand it is not to be used in Florida, but it's CENTCOM from what I understand. That would seem to indicate a more overarching and widespread intent.
    - GHFigs 16y ago
      USSOCOM (Special Operations Command) which includes most Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations groups is also headquartered at MacDill.
jsm386 16y ago
I am not going to take a position one way or the other as I know nothing about them, but I've seen this group come up as an issue on Reddit every so often: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Internet_Defense_Force http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Internet_Defense_Force see: http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Areddit.com+jidf http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Areddit.com+jidf
Vivtek 16y ago
If they're worried about this level of sockpuppetry, wait until the sockpuppets get automated. It's this kind of lapping-up-against-the-Singularity stuff that will make H. sapiens obsolete in the end.
- bugsy 16y ago
  Well the article does talk about that. And there are plenty of bot posters out there as well, they were quite notorious in manipulating stock prices. Terminology note - sockpuppet is a Persona that is created to back up the opinions of second Persona. The general term here seems to be Persona, of which sockpuppet is a specific kind of Persona.
  - Vivtek 16y ago
    Bah. It's still a sock puppet. Calling it a persona just makes it sound reputable.
anguslong 16y ago
tl;dr Contractor develops psyops backend for the cloud. Creates fake persona pool. Uses anonymizer/chameleon for IP obfuscation, vmware/virtualbox instances for each persona, enables deploying to vps around the world. Uses system to age personas via social/email accounts and salt with rss, social & checkin data. RFP: https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=d88e9d660336be91552fe8c1a51bacb2&tab=core&_cview=1 https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id...
- bugsy 16y ago
  That is a pretty &!@(&ing awesome link you pulled out there with an actual Air Force project that does just this thing. Wow. Saved to disk in case that page vanishes without a trace.
  - joelhaus 16y ago
    Ha, saved as well... it's a gem. I've got to believe that the social networks and Google have been thinking about way to combat this problem too. I wonder what kind of impact Google's open-source two-step authentication [1] (and other types of mobile device verification systems [2]) will have on efforts to develop meaningful persona management software. If implemented properly, mobile device verification would surely inhibit such efforts. [1] http://code.google.com/p/google-authenticator/ http://code.google.com/p/google-authenticator/ [2] http://openid.net/2009/09/09/yahoo-paypal-google-equifax-aol-verisign-acxiom-citi-privo-wave-systems-pilot-open-identity-for-open-government-2/ http://openid.net/2009/09/09/yahoo-paypal-google-equifax-aol... EDIT: Didn't notice before, so not sure if they just added it, but the same RFP is duplicated & linked to at the bottom of the article.
    - caf 16y ago
      I reckon if you can afford to do this, you can afford to buy one phone per puppet.
      - joelhaus 16y ago
        True, but it introduces a number of manual procedures into, what would otherwise be, an automated workflow. Even if the only obstacle was to connect each phone to your network, it would still slow the rise of an army of zombie personas.
alexophile 16y ago
Social/crowdsourced companies do this all the time, they just don't have such sophisticated software. But that's hardly an inconceivable jump - I would certainly not be surprised to see a number of in-house versions of this at work all over the internet. I worked with an early stage company that relied on user-generated content that essentially did this but didn't tell the new CMs, so we spent the first couple weeks trying to get increased activity out of the clones. Bonus example, there was an interview with the founder of thathigh.com on here not too long ago where he talked about doing exactly this. The game isn't new, only the players - and you can always spot a newb, even if he has really nice equipment. [Edit, appending part of my reddit comment on the sme article]: Here in Chicago, elections are (or at least were for a long time) considered to be basically a running joke. It's a city of horriffic corruption, and everyone's pretty much gotten used to it. This should be far more unsettling than gov contractors manufacturing an echo chamber. At least when they're sneaky about it you know they're scared.
philthy 16y ago
Nigerians, scammers, fraudsters, and all other sorts of Internet criminals already do this kind of stuff and have for years. Plus this happens in the real world, it's just called identity fraud. This once again further proves the technological ineptitude of the US Government and it's contractors, this isn't in any way an advanced concept. HB Gary got rooted by a 16 year old girl, what is everyone so worried about?
jarin 16y ago
Wow, kind of makes you wonder what really sparked off the revolutions in the Arab world, doesn't it?
motters 16y ago
This is the first time that I've heard about "Persona Management Software", and I think it raises some serious questions. Taken to its logical conclusion systems like this could be used to influence the outcomes of elections and other kinds of collective decision making, so there's a debate to be had over whether use of this kind of software should be legal or to what extent it should be regulated if it's used by companies or government agencies.
DanielBMarkham 16y ago
I've found that in the last couple of years, I keep expecting the internet to be one way and it keeps being another. So for instance, they say if you want people to read your work, concentrate on quality. But that's bullshit, what you need to concentrate on is popularity. On any given day, boards all over the place are full of high-ranking articles that are crap that people vote on simply because the author is popular. Then they say that the wisdom of the crowds will help pick clear winners. But the wisdom part begins to look like mob rule and crowds can be easily gamed, as this article shows. I could go on, but I think I'm not alone in realizing that the cool interconnected internet that I wanted and the one we're actually getting are two completely different things. So on one hand I congratulate this author -- we critically need to get this information out and emphasize it. But on the other hand, it's just another in a long series of "So, you thought it worked this way? Boy were you wrong." kind of things. So I'm left wondering: do we all just sit around and whine about how things aren't turning out the right way? Go out and "fight the system" Adapt? Make the most of it? What? While you can fight the system if it's the local town government putting up a stoplight, fighting the system effectively and honorably where the system is billions of people of hundreds of cultures all interacting randomly is a bit too much to fit in my head. Apologies for the rant. Just seemed like a pattern I've noticed of late.
- anon808 16y ago
  don't whine or fight. create the world you want to live in. the internet doesn't work one way or another. people on the internet work one way or another. you don't like how some groups are working, don't work with them. work another way. everyone has a choice. i know it can seem overwhelming when a lot of people choose to work one way that doesn't seem right, but don't let it get you down. you have a choice too, and you don't have to work the same way they do. work a different way.
- sfphotoarts 16y ago
  The internet is really many superimposed communities. Expecting the internet, or pretty much anything else to be a certain way is setting yourself up for unfulfilled expectation. The internet is a rapidly changing place and filled with enormous diversity of people, views and interests.
b_emery 16y ago
I think this illustrates a need for an HN-like internet-global karma system. That is, unless some of you have sockpuppet armies upvoting your comments. Say it isn't so!
- epochwolf 16y ago
  And who will you trust to implement such a system? How would you prevent gaming? How do you prevent someone from bribing the operators?
narrator 16y ago
I used to see sock puppets on yahoo finance message boards for small energy companies. The sock puppet would repeat the same five or six canned messages several times a day under multiple aliases. They would never reply to criticism or anyone responding to their posts. I would come back weeks later and the same sock puppets would still be there with the same repetitive slightly varying messages posted in enormous quantities. my suspicion is that this was some bigger energy companies paying some black PR to pay people (probably in a business process outsourcing sweat shop somewhere in a developing country) to repetitively post these things, or write scripts to do so, in order to drive down the price of these small energy companies so they could be acquired. The hallmark of a sockpuppet is not responding with anything but a canned ad-hominem response, and posting the same set of talking points in enormous volume.
- bugsy 16y ago
  > The hallmark of a sockpuppet is not responding with anything but a canned ad-hominem response, and posting the same set of talking points in enormous volume. That's a good list for that style of Persona. Here's an example: http://www.reddit.com/user/jmeasley/ http://www.reddit.com/user/jmeasley/
jrwoodruff 16y ago
It surprises me that this hasn't been done already. In fact, I would be willing to bet that somewhere, this type of software exists in some form. I'm fairly sure (although cannot prove, of course) that I watched this happen to a blog critical of a large publishing company here in the U.S.: http://gannettblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/trolls-inc-take-this-with-grain-of-salt.html http://gannettblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/trolls-inc-take-this... Probably didn't use fancy software, but there certainly appeared to be a concerted attack effort against the blogger for an extended and sustained period of time.
Natsu 16y ago
During the 2008 elections, it was hard to miss the fact that one guy managed to get the first comment on almost every single news site with comments. Maybe he had no life, but I strongly suspected that that was his job. Also, he vanished immediately after the elections were over.
jleader 16y ago
I can't believe no one's mentioned http://xkcd.com/810/ http://xkcd.com/810/ about training sock puppet bots to make relevant contributions to the conversation.
Anon84 16y ago
I wonder if any of the ones we found with Truthy ( http://truthy.indiana.edu/ http://truthy.indiana.edu/ ) were generated in this way
NHQ 16y ago
Would creating fake personas be considered government propaganda?
ttt567 16y ago
In Internet quantity is quality.
ChuckMcM 16y ago
"On the internet, nobody knows you are a stick drive." The concept isn't particularly astonishing, Here is the TV show from 71 that used this for entertainment http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067551/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067551/ Of course with the Internet everything can be bigger/badder/etc. Looking at is from the perspective of algorithmic search (my current interest) its fascinating to see software which creates an entire "fake community" using things like markov-chain spam on hastily concocted php forum sites to simulate an organic community of interest. Literally, there is no way to know. Maybe we'll know that AI is here when it devlops sentience and then posts something witty on our facebook wall. New trust models, not 'friending' anyone you haven't met in person, alternative communities for verbal interaction. It just reminds me of the adage that demand creates products to fill that demand as soon as the economics favor creation.

326 points by ph0rque 16y ago

wybo 16y ago

Faking dozens of personas online gives a whole new meaning to the phrase 'we are legion'. Scary indeed.

I've always assumed this kind of psyops has been used by, if not govt agencies, PACs or private entities. Digg commenters in particular.

bediger 16y ago

Ha ha! The leak that blows the sockpuppets/trolls wide open! We knew this day would arrive, and it finally did. But the bigger question: why didn't dailykos.com link to the Aaron Barr email in question? I ask for two reasons. First, it seems kind of Mainstream Media of them to not link to it. Trying to keep us on your site, Kos, or is this one of those "sensitive" things that must be kept out of the common man's hands, a gatekeeper function that newspapers used to exercize? Second, I want to find out more about the Persona Management Software. It seems like an opportunity for an open source project.

Vivtek 16y ago
It's just a diary - the author probably just didn't think of linking to the mail, or read it elsewhere. It shouldn't be too hard to find. I was totally thinking it would be fun to do this as open source, though. Giving propaganda tools to the common man!
GHFigs 16y ago
The leak that blows the sockpuppets/trolls wide open! Could you elaborate on this? The article only talks about ideas contained in Word documents.
- bediger 16y ago
  Elaborate on this? Certainly. Visit a website that allows comments, and posts articles on controlversial topics. Say, techdirt.com or groklaw.net. Read all the comments for 10 articles. You'll quickly come to the realization that a number of the differently-named identities repeat a large number of the same ideas, concepts and talking points. But all these differently-named identities have different habits of usage. Maybe one of them can't be bothered to use the shift-key, like e e cummings. One of them is named "Darryl" and posts rather rambling comments. A few of them are anonymous cowards. But over the course of a few weeks diligent followers of the comments in a blog see that all the trolls start using the same talking points at the same time. Maybe a phrase like "rich user experience" shows up in all troll comments one day. A few weeks later, any number of people chime in with "I love linux as much as the next guy, but Microsoft has a great product this time." What I mean by "blows the sockpuppets/trolls wide open" is that this revelation finally explains how a site like Groklaw.net or techdirt.com can attract such a large number of persistent detractors. Sockpuppet/Persona Management explains how a single person can create a large number of different trolls with different writing characteristics, different vocabularies, but all with the same point of view.
  - GHFigs 16y ago
    This is just an alternative explanation for an observed phenomenon. Actual human beings are entirely capable of reduction to repeatable talking points and strangely fanatical persistence given the right framing and environment.
  - SatireBot_2 16y ago
    Hey Bruce, What you're talking about? Can you provide examples? Wagg-ed is the best damned social media program on planet earth! Oh yeah, and be sure to check out the new edition of Windows CE. Keep Rocking. ____________ Sent from the year 2937 from my Windows Galactic Mobile Handset WebCommunicator 7 edition.

bugsy 16y ago

The Chinese government has the "50 cent army" which is a 300,000 strong persona ops set. Many are Chinese students in the US who are required to post pro-China posts while in school and pretend to be a random western sympathizer. This is the largest and most organized, but there are tons of these and you see them on all the major boards. Can identify them when there is something really indefensible and they are in defending it with statements like "Well, as far as I know, none of the Wall Street companies broke any laws. So if you are concerned, maybe you should blame the government for deregulating." Their accounts are full of certain themes that enable you to identify them. At first I typed up here techniques on how to recognize them but on second thought I don't want to give them ideas on how to correct. Of interest to me right now is whether this propaganda war can be widely unveiled. It's hard since there are likely thousands of different PR ops posting stuff so there's no single pattern, and it's subtle to distinguish between this and zealous and sincere advocates of things. It would also be pretty easy to dismiss zealous advocates as PR ops as an attack strategy against advocates. Maybe that will eventually mean sincere advocates will end up having to blog more with their real name and photo to be taken seriously.

bugsy 16y ago
Thinking about this some more. Anonymity is required for democracy to work properly. Citizens of a society need to be able to speak candidly without fear of reprisal. That's just the way it is because power attracts the corrupt and the corrupt will use their power to silence dissent. Egypt could not figure out all of who was posting things against the government, so they just shut down the whole internet to try to stop anonymous speech. In the US there seems to be more control of networks and Palintir is a defense contractor that sells software to figure out who is talking to who and what their real identity is. I am sure Palintir will be making lots of sales to governments right now that don't want to see the middle east revolutions that are occurring right now happen in their own tyrannical dictatorships and corporatocracies. The HBGary scandal involves multiple companies, not just the token one (HBGary) which has been "thrown under the bus" as a sacrifice and distraction. This is going on right now in other companies as well, so punishing HBGary doesn't slay the dragon. Corporations and governments are gaming the anonymous free speech system by astroturfing, persona management, sock puppetry etc. There are armies of people posting fake opinions in an effort to manipulate public opinion and steer it towards agendas which are not sincerely held by the people posting them. They are posting only because it is their job and they are being paid. This activity is very destructive to democracy because it alters things from being the true will of the people. It is tantamount to election tampering. It is critical that the public develop a response to this in the form of tools for identifying this activity. One excellent tool is Anonymous's randomly discovering and the publishing incriminating emails. This activity is beneficial to democracy. However, its success is highly dependent on random chance and luck. It is also very illegal. Right now law enforcement is doing everything they can to track down the people who uncovered the wide spread and insidious wrongdoing. Punish the whistleblower is probably not going away. The public also needs tools which are legal to use. There are efforts right now to "build a new internet" that preserves anonymity and thus free speech. That is good but more is necessary. Another thing which is needed is for Palintir-like systems which can peek behind the scenes, uncover connections between posts, patterns of posting and patterns of speech, to be written and open sourced. These systems can be used to identify sock puppets. They can also be used as a weapon to unmask the anonymous and attack free speech, but they are already being done to do that. We need these tools on both sides now to level the playing field.

unsigner 16y ago

Somehow the left considers the Internet their backyard, and are extremely surprised and offended when opponents dare to play with "their" toys.

locopati 16y ago
Can you expand on your comment to explain how it makes any sense?
- stcredzero 16y ago
  Many people who know me consider me to be "left" but it makes sense to me. The Internet is just a medium. It doesn't favor any particular viewpoint. There's this idea from summer movies that the "good guys" are always hip with the new tools. That's not true. If anything, it does tend to be the underdogs or insurgents that are the early adopters, but this status has nothing to do with "good/bad" or with any particular political affiliation.
- hristov 16y ago
  Unfortunately, the "explanation" feature is not built into the sockpuppet software yet, it is still in alpha, but I am sure in a 6-9 month period you will be able to get some kind of vague generic explanation.
  - CamperBob 16y ago
    I can hardly wait until the CAPTCHA is replaced by the Voight-Kampff test.
invertd 16y ago
Would you make the same comment when they turn and use their "toys" against you?
mquander 16y ago
Can I take it, then, that you like the idea of federal contractors spending taxpayer dollars on semi-automated sockpuppets in order to spam propaganda on their behalf, as long as it's not liberal propaganda?

jcromartie 16y ago

What's more amazing is the USAF solicitation for bids on this kind of software. They say it's for use in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Florida.

imajes 16y ago
that'd be where they'd observe it from, or whatever other neutral ops outside of the theater of war is; not that they intend to use it against florida.
- jcromartie 16y ago
  I understand it is not to be used in Florida, but it's CENTCOM from what I understand. That would seem to indicate a more overarching and widespread intent.
  - GHFigs 16y ago
    USSOCOM (Special Operations Command) which includes most Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations groups is also headquartered at MacDill.

jsm386 16y ago

I am not going to take a position one way or the other as I know nothing about them, but I've seen this group come up as an issue on Reddit every so often: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Internet_Defense_Force http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Internet_Defense_Force see: http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Areddit.com+jidf http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Areddit.com+jidf

Vivtek 16y ago

If they're worried about this level of sockpuppetry, wait until the sockpuppets get automated. It's this kind of lapping-up-against-the-Singularity stuff that will make H. sapiens obsolete in the end.

bugsy 16y ago
Well the article does talk about that. And there are plenty of bot posters out there as well, they were quite notorious in manipulating stock prices. Terminology note - sockpuppet is a Persona that is created to back up the opinions of second Persona. The general term here seems to be Persona, of which sockpuppet is a specific kind of Persona.
- Vivtek 16y ago
  Bah. It's still a sock puppet. Calling it a persona just makes it sound reputable.

anguslong 16y ago

tl;dr Contractor develops psyops backend for the cloud. Creates fake persona pool. Uses anonymizer/chameleon for IP obfuscation, vmware/virtualbox instances for each persona, enables deploying to vps around the world. Uses system to age personas via social/email accounts and salt with rss, social & checkin data. RFP: https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=d88e9d660336be91552fe8c1a51bacb2&tab=core&_cview=1 https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id...

bugsy 16y ago
That is a pretty &!@(&ing awesome link you pulled out there with an actual Air Force project that does just this thing. Wow. Saved to disk in case that page vanishes without a trace.
- joelhaus 16y ago
  Ha, saved as well... it's a gem. I've got to believe that the social networks and Google have been thinking about way to combat this problem too. I wonder what kind of impact Google's open-source two-step authentication [1] (and other types of mobile device verification systems [2]) will have on efforts to develop meaningful persona management software. If implemented properly, mobile device verification would surely inhibit such efforts. [1] http://code.google.com/p/google-authenticator/ http://code.google.com/p/google-authenticator/ [2] http://openid.net/2009/09/09/yahoo-paypal-google-equifax-aol-verisign-acxiom-citi-privo-wave-systems-pilot-open-identity-for-open-government-2/ http://openid.net/2009/09/09/yahoo-paypal-google-equifax-aol... EDIT: Didn't notice before, so not sure if they just added it, but the same RFP is duplicated & linked to at the bottom of the article.
  - caf 16y ago
    I reckon if you can afford to do this, you can afford to buy one phone per puppet.
    - joelhaus 16y ago
      True, but it introduces a number of manual procedures into, what would otherwise be, an automated workflow. Even if the only obstacle was to connect each phone to your network, it would still slow the rise of an army of zombie personas.

alexophile 16y ago

Social/crowdsourced companies do this all the time, they just don't have such sophisticated software. But that's hardly an inconceivable jump - I would certainly not be surprised to see a number of in-house versions of this at work all over the internet. I worked with an early stage company that relied on user-generated content that essentially did this but didn't tell the new CMs, so we spent the first couple weeks trying to get increased activity out of the clones. Bonus example, there was an interview with the founder of thathigh.com on here not too long ago where he talked about doing exactly this. The game isn't new, only the players - and you can always spot a newb, even if he has really nice equipment. [Edit, appending part of my reddit comment on the sme article]: Here in Chicago, elections are (or at least were for a long time) considered to be basically a running joke. It's a city of horriffic corruption, and everyone's pretty much gotten used to it. This should be far more unsettling than gov contractors manufacturing an echo chamber. At least when they're sneaky about it you know they're scared.

philthy 16y ago

Nigerians, scammers, fraudsters, and all other sorts of Internet criminals already do this kind of stuff and have for years. Plus this happens in the real world, it's just called identity fraud. This once again further proves the technological ineptitude of the US Government and it's contractors, this isn't in any way an advanced concept. HB Gary got rooted by a 16 year old girl, what is everyone so worried about?

jarin 16y ago

Wow, kind of makes you wonder what really sparked off the revolutions in the Arab world, doesn't it?

motters 16y ago

This is the first time that I've heard about "Persona Management Software", and I think it raises some serious questions. Taken to its logical conclusion systems like this could be used to influence the outcomes of elections and other kinds of collective decision making, so there's a debate to be had over whether use of this kind of software should be legal or to what extent it should be regulated if it's used by companies or government agencies.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

I've found that in the last couple of years, I keep expecting the internet to be one way and it keeps being another. So for instance, they say if you want people to read your work, concentrate on quality. But that's bullshit, what you need to concentrate on is popularity. On any given day, boards all over the place are full of high-ranking articles that are crap that people vote on simply because the author is popular. Then they say that the wisdom of the crowds will help pick clear winners. But the wisdom part begins to look like mob rule and crowds can be easily gamed, as this article shows. I could go on, but I think I'm not alone in realizing that the cool interconnected internet that I wanted and the one we're actually getting are two completely different things. So on one hand I congratulate this author -- we critically need to get this information out and emphasize it. But on the other hand, it's just another in a long series of "So, you thought it worked this way? Boy were you wrong." kind of things. So I'm left wondering: do we all just sit around and whine about how things aren't turning out the right way? Go out and "fight the system" Adapt? Make the most of it? What? While you can fight the system if it's the local town government putting up a stoplight, fighting the system effectively and honorably where the system is billions of people of hundreds of cultures all interacting randomly is a bit too much to fit in my head. Apologies for the rant. Just seemed like a pattern I've noticed of late.

anon808 16y ago
don't whine or fight. create the world you want to live in. the internet doesn't work one way or another. people on the internet work one way or another. you don't like how some groups are working, don't work with them. work another way. everyone has a choice. i know it can seem overwhelming when a lot of people choose to work one way that doesn't seem right, but don't let it get you down. you have a choice too, and you don't have to work the same way they do. work a different way.
sfphotoarts 16y ago
The internet is really many superimposed communities. Expecting the internet, or pretty much anything else to be a certain way is setting yourself up for unfulfilled expectation. The internet is a rapidly changing place and filled with enormous diversity of people, views and interests.

b_emery 16y ago

I think this illustrates a need for an HN-like internet-global karma system. That is, unless some of you have sockpuppet armies upvoting your comments. Say it isn't so!

epochwolf 16y ago
And who will you trust to implement such a system? How would you prevent gaming? How do you prevent someone from bribing the operators?

narrator 16y ago

I used to see sock puppets on yahoo finance message boards for small energy companies. The sock puppet would repeat the same five or six canned messages several times a day under multiple aliases. They would never reply to criticism or anyone responding to their posts. I would come back weeks later and the same sock puppets would still be there with the same repetitive slightly varying messages posted in enormous quantities. my suspicion is that this was some bigger energy companies paying some black PR to pay people (probably in a business process outsourcing sweat shop somewhere in a developing country) to repetitively post these things, or write scripts to do so, in order to drive down the price of these small energy companies so they could be acquired. The hallmark of a sockpuppet is not responding with anything but a canned ad-hominem response, and posting the same set of talking points in enormous volume.

bugsy 16y ago
> The hallmark of a sockpuppet is not responding with anything but a canned ad-hominem response, and posting the same set of talking points in enormous volume. That's a good list for that style of Persona. Here's an example: http://www.reddit.com/user/jmeasley/ http://www.reddit.com/user/jmeasley/

jrwoodruff 16y ago

It surprises me that this hasn't been done already. In fact, I would be willing to bet that somewhere, this type of software exists in some form. I'm fairly sure (although cannot prove, of course) that I watched this happen to a blog critical of a large publishing company here in the U.S.: http://gannettblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/trolls-inc-take-this-with-grain-of-salt.html http://gannettblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/trolls-inc-take-this... Probably didn't use fancy software, but there certainly appeared to be a concerted attack effort against the blogger for an extended and sustained period of time.

Natsu 16y ago

During the 2008 elections, it was hard to miss the fact that one guy managed to get the first comment on almost every single news site with comments. Maybe he had no life, but I strongly suspected that that was his job. Also, he vanished immediately after the elections were over.

jleader 16y ago

I can't believe no one's mentioned http://xkcd.com/810/ http://xkcd.com/810/ about training sock puppet bots to make relevant contributions to the conversation.

Anon84 16y ago

I wonder if any of the ones we found with Truthy ( http://truthy.indiana.edu/ http://truthy.indiana.edu/ ) were generated in this way

NHQ 16y ago

Would creating fake personas be considered government propaganda?

ttt567 16y ago

In Internet quantity is quality.

ChuckMcM 16y ago

"On the internet, nobody knows you are a stick drive." The concept isn't particularly astonishing, Here is the TV show from 71 that used this for entertainment http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067551/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067551/ Of course with the Internet everything can be bigger/badder/etc. Looking at is from the perspective of algorithmic search (my current interest) its fascinating to see software which creates an entire "fake community" using things like markov-chain spam on hastily concocted php forum sites to simulate an organic community of interest. Literally, there is no way to know. Maybe we'll know that AI is here when it devlops sentience and then posts something witty on our facebook wall. New trust models, not 'friending' anyone you haven't met in person, alternative communities for verbal interaction. It just reminds me of the adage that demand creates products to fill that demand as soon as the economics favor creation.