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Dilbert creator outed for using sock puppets on Metafilter and Reddit

40 points by Flemlord 16y ago

slapshot 16y ago
tl;dr: An innocent MetaFilter user posted about Scott Adams's writing. A flame war broke out about whether Adams was right, is self-promotional, is a nice person, etc. One of the users defending Adams was "plannedchaos." After a series of increasingly bizzare statements ("How many people think I'm actually Scott Adams writing about myself in third person?" and "Is it Adams' enormous success at self-promotion that makes you jealous and angry?" among them), an administrator of Metafilter (cortex) emailed "plannedchaos" and asked him to own up to it. Scott Adams did so. Metafilter traditionally has been good at rooting out sock puppets when they become relevant; no surprise here. (PayPal verification is useful for that) The original metafilter thread: http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-a-Real-Education-by-Scott-Adams http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-a-Real-Education... Direct link to Scott Adams owning up to being Scott Adams: http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-a-Real-Education-by-Scott-Adams#3639512 http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-a-Real-Education...
- jerrya 16y ago
  Regardless of whether Adams should have posted as plannedchaos or not, it feels a bit icky and privacy violating to me that an administrator of Metafilter knew and acted on it. As examples, if you work at the Social Security Administration, you are not supposed to look up Scott Adams and find out his information. And if you work at American Express, you still are not supposed to look up Scott Adams and tell people what he buys. How did cortex know plannedchaos was Scott Adams, and what tools did cortex use? (and okay, when did he know it.) For all the weirdness in that thread, that's the part that bugs me.
  - teraflop 16y ago
    Cortex didn't out him, he outed himself and cortex confirmed it. My assumption is that cortex asked for permission first. I'm not in on what happened behind the scenes in this particular case, but I've been hanging around MeFi for a while, and the mods are generally very scrupulous about privacy.
    - jerrya 16y ago
      I will defer to you, however that's one but not the only interpretation of: "How many people think I'm actually Scott Adams writing about myself in third person? posted by plannedchaos at 9:21 AM on April 15 plannedchaos, please check your email. posted by cortex at 10:19 AM on April 15 [4 favorites] " At this point, I still don't think cortex has much business looking at plannedchaos' records (subject to arbitrary mefi rules that everyone the community might understand differently.) If I said, "How many people here think I'm Paul Graham writing about Scott Adams" would that vague statement give any moderator here permission to look at my profile? And I'm not even sure I approve of cortex confirming it unless and until Adams asks. Moderator's job: make sure spam/hate/abuse/trolling doesn't go to far. Occasionally delete comment. Occasionally delete thread. Occasionally apply banhammer. I don't see in the moderator's job permission to snoop on personal records of any ser that says anything mildly provocative.
      - joshmillard 16y ago
        Hi, this is cortex. How it played out, very short version: I got up in the morning and checked the new signups, part of my morning routine. We have to check for spammers and shills on a daily basis to keep mefi free from linkfarming and bullshit self-links and so on, and that tool is step one. The paypal info that comes with the $5 signup fee is hugely helpful for profiling likely spammers. I noticed what looked like a signup from Adams himself; person I've heard of signing up happens now and then, it's an "oh neat" moment and that's about it, since if you're sticking to the community guidelines and participating in good faith, who you are and what you do and how anonymous you choose to be is entirely your business. Unfortunately, what I saw when I checked out his comments since signup was weird aggressive pretending-to-be-a-third-party arguing about himself, which is really not an okay thing to pull on mefi. I talked to the rest of the staff, we sent Scott an email saying "you need to either let folks know who you are or stop having this proxy argument about yourself as if you're someone else". Time passes, no response from Scott. Then he posts that "who thinks I'm Scott Adams?" comment. Gave him some more time, still no reply, left the "check your email" comment. Time passes, and then, still no response to us, he drops the disclosure in the thread. If he'd chosen to walk away, that'd have been fine too, and we'd have had nothing to say publicly about what he did regardless of how obnoxious and sketchy it was. We took considerable pains NOT to out him and make it his call how to proceed.
  - turbodog 16y ago
    Do notice that a MeFite correctly called him on this way upthread. I don't think the mods got involved until Adams outed himself. http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-a-Real-Education-by-Scott-Adams#3637745 http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-a-Real-Education...
    - jerrya 16y ago
      Ah! Very perceptive. But that's not a confirmed outing. And I've done that in other forums to other people making weirdly passionate defenses of someone. Sometimes that's just a mocking. The first whiff I get of an outing is cortex's msg in the forum to Scott Adams that he has a message waiting. At that point, it seems cortex has snooped without what I see any real reason/need to do so.
TomOfTTB 16y ago
What exactly is wrong with a famous person having sock puppets? The opposition to this sort of thing defies logic to me. To quote a comment on Metafilter... Scott, if you wanted to sign up for Metafilter to defend your writing, that would have been fine. If you wanted to sign up for Metafilter and be incognito as just another user, that'd be fine too. Doing both simultaneously isn't; pretending to be a third party and high-fiving yourself by proxy is a pretty sketchy move and a serious violation of general community expectations about identity management around here. So he's acknowledging the value of being able to present opinions as "just another person" and acknowledging the value of the author being able to post as himself but then he says those two are wrong in combination? Doesn't really make sense. As for being dishonest I don't see a sock puppet as any more or less dishonest as any other screen name. And who exactly is hurt? At best a sock puppet makes it look like the author has one supporter more than he actually has. So what? No one's going to be swayed by one supporter. Moreover I think someone like Scott Adams should have the right to defend themselves without people automatically dismissing it as self preservation. In the end a sock puppet is just a way for a famous author to present his ideas without bringing his fame into the conversation and I don't see what's wrong with that.
- yuhong 16y ago
  It is called astroturfing and it is a bad thing to do.
  - TomOfTTB 16y ago
    Well no it's actually not. Astroturfing would be if he had 100 sock puppets.
    - yuhong 16y ago
      Yea, that would have been seriously bad. In this case it would not be anywhere near as bad, but it is still bad.
      - TomOfTTB 16y ago
tzs 16y ago
Let's say someone posts something that says "Scott Adams opinion on X is stupid", and that person is misunderstanding what Scott Adams said. I see no fundamental difference between me posting something saying "No, what Adams meant was Y" and Scott Adams posting under a fake name saying "No, what Adams meant was Y", other than that if he posted under his real name it might shorten the discussion as there would be less grounds for people to say the poster is misunderstanding Adams' position. As far as I can see, he didn't use his pseudonyms to do things like post positive reviews of his work (which would be wrong because it would imply that the review is from a third party). All he seemed to be doing, at least in the Reddit threads he participated in, was to explain Adams' positions and debate Adams' critics. This doesn't seem like sock puppetry to me.
nhangen 16y ago
1. Am I the only one that was expecting a video with real sock puppets? I'm feeling behind the times. 2. I thought it was great. He was articulate and mostly transparent, and more importantly - I got the sense that he was able to repel the onslaught without becoming an asshole. I'm not necessarily an Adams fan, but in this case, I see no evil.
giberson 16y ago
I would argue you can have a more honest discussion in the shoes of a bystander than in the shoes of the author.
- jerrya 16y ago
  Isn't that a common theme in many works of fiction?
statictype 16y ago
I looked at his comment history on reddit. I don't see him doing anything shady. He's defending his arguments while referring to himself in the third person. He's not using it to promote his books or other products.
mdpm 16y ago
This wasn't an issue of morality, or even of rule-breaking; rather one of community standards (for mefi). Not too much integrity was on display here by Adams. They simply asked him to either operate as himself, or cease the pretense of being someone else. I think the most illuminating comment of of the thread was the rephrasing made here: http://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/gqzgx/dilbert_creator_outed_for_using_sock_puppets_on/c1pms4p http://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/gqzgx/dilbert_creato... He wasn't using anonymity for the sake of interacting or learning, while negating the effect of his 'fame' on discourse. He seemingly joined to leap into the fray in his defense, quite aggressively. I guess the admins at mefi weren't quite wanting this sort of thing: http://www.reddit.com/user/plannedchaos http://www.reddit.com/user/plannedchaos to happen.
moomin 16y ago
Is it just me, or was Scott Adams channelling Dogbert?
warmfuzzykitten 16y ago
More like, metafilter outed as tedious cesspool of uninformed opinion and snark.

40 points by Flemlord 16y ago

tl;dr: An innocent MetaFilter user posted about Scott Adams's writing. A flame war broke out about whether Adams was right, is self-promotional, is a nice person, etc. One of the users defending Adams was "plannedchaos." After a series of increasingly bizzare statements ("How many people think I'm actually Scott Adams writing about myself in third person?" and "Is it Adams' enormous success at self-promotion that makes you jealous and angry?" among them), an administrator of Metafilter (cortex) emailed "plannedchaos" and asked him to own up to it. Scott Adams did so. Metafilter traditionally has been good at rooting out sock puppets when they become relevant; no surprise here. (PayPal verification is useful for that) The original metafilter thread: http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-a-Real-Education-by-Scott-Adams http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-a-Real-Education... Direct link to Scott Adams owning up to being Scott Adams: http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-a-Real-Education-by-Scott-Adams#3639512 http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-a-Real-Education...

jerrya 16y ago
Regardless of whether Adams should have posted as plannedchaos or not, it feels a bit icky and privacy violating to me that an administrator of Metafilter knew and acted on it. As examples, if you work at the Social Security Administration, you are not supposed to look up Scott Adams and find out his information. And if you work at American Express, you still are not supposed to look up Scott Adams and tell people what he buys. How did cortex know plannedchaos was Scott Adams, and what tools did cortex use? (and okay, when did he know it.) For all the weirdness in that thread, that's the part that bugs me.
- teraflop 16y ago
  Cortex didn't out him, he outed himself and cortex confirmed it. My assumption is that cortex asked for permission first. I'm not in on what happened behind the scenes in this particular case, but I've been hanging around MeFi for a while, and the mods are generally very scrupulous about privacy.
  - jerrya 16y ago
    I will defer to you, however that's one but not the only interpretation of: "How many people think I'm actually Scott Adams writing about myself in third person? posted by plannedchaos at 9:21 AM on April 15 plannedchaos, please check your email. posted by cortex at 10:19 AM on April 15 [4 favorites] " At this point, I still don't think cortex has much business looking at plannedchaos' records (subject to arbitrary mefi rules that everyone the community might understand differently.) If I said, "How many people here think I'm Paul Graham writing about Scott Adams" would that vague statement give any moderator here permission to look at my profile? And I'm not even sure I approve of cortex confirming it unless and until Adams asks. Moderator's job: make sure spam/hate/abuse/trolling doesn't go to far. Occasionally delete comment. Occasionally delete thread. Occasionally apply banhammer. I don't see in the moderator's job permission to snoop on personal records of any ser that says anything mildly provocative.
    - joshmillard 16y ago
      Hi, this is cortex. How it played out, very short version: I got up in the morning and checked the new signups, part of my morning routine. We have to check for spammers and shills on a daily basis to keep mefi free from linkfarming and bullshit self-links and so on, and that tool is step one. The paypal info that comes with the $5 signup fee is hugely helpful for profiling likely spammers. I noticed what looked like a signup from Adams himself; person I've heard of signing up happens now and then, it's an "oh neat" moment and that's about it, since if you're sticking to the community guidelines and participating in good faith, who you are and what you do and how anonymous you choose to be is entirely your business. Unfortunately, what I saw when I checked out his comments since signup was weird aggressive pretending-to-be-a-third-party arguing about himself, which is really not an okay thing to pull on mefi. I talked to the rest of the staff, we sent Scott an email saying "you need to either let folks know who you are or stop having this proxy argument about yourself as if you're someone else". Time passes, no response from Scott. Then he posts that "who thinks I'm Scott Adams?" comment. Gave him some more time, still no reply, left the "check your email" comment. Time passes, and then, still no response to us, he drops the disclosure in the thread. If he'd chosen to walk away, that'd have been fine too, and we'd have had nothing to say publicly about what he did regardless of how obnoxious and sketchy it was. We took considerable pains NOT to out him and make it his call how to proceed.
- turbodog 16y ago
  Do notice that a MeFite correctly called him on this way upthread. I don't think the mods got involved until Adams outed himself. http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-a-Real-Education-by-Scott-Adams#3637745 http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-a-Real-Education...
  - jerrya 16y ago
    Ah! Very perceptive. But that's not a confirmed outing. And I've done that in other forums to other people making weirdly passionate defenses of someone. Sometimes that's just a mocking. The first whiff I get of an outing is cortex's msg in the forum to Scott Adams that he has a message waiting. At that point, it seems cortex has snooped without what I see any real reason/need to do so.

TomOfTTB 16y ago

What exactly is wrong with a famous person having sock puppets? The opposition to this sort of thing defies logic to me. To quote a comment on Metafilter... Scott, if you wanted to sign up for Metafilter to defend your writing, that would have been fine. If you wanted to sign up for Metafilter and be incognito as just another user, that'd be fine too. Doing both simultaneously isn't; pretending to be a third party and high-fiving yourself by proxy is a pretty sketchy move and a serious violation of general community expectations about identity management around here. So he's acknowledging the value of being able to present opinions as "just another person" and acknowledging the value of the author being able to post as himself but then he says those two are wrong in combination? Doesn't really make sense. As for being dishonest I don't see a sock puppet as any more or less dishonest as any other screen name. And who exactly is hurt? At best a sock puppet makes it look like the author has one supporter more than he actually has. So what? No one's going to be swayed by one supporter. Moreover I think someone like Scott Adams should have the right to defend themselves without people automatically dismissing it as self preservation. In the end a sock puppet is just a way for a famous author to present his ideas without bringing his fame into the conversation and I don't see what's wrong with that.

yuhong 16y ago
It is called astroturfing and it is a bad thing to do.
- TomOfTTB 16y ago
  Well no it's actually not. Astroturfing would be if he had 100 sock puppets.
  - yuhong 16y ago
    Yea, that would have been seriously bad. In this case it would not be anywhere near as bad, but it is still bad.
    - TomOfTTB 16y ago

tzs 16y ago

Let's say someone posts something that says "Scott Adams opinion on X is stupid", and that person is misunderstanding what Scott Adams said. I see no fundamental difference between me posting something saying "No, what Adams meant was Y" and Scott Adams posting under a fake name saying "No, what Adams meant was Y", other than that if he posted under his real name it might shorten the discussion as there would be less grounds for people to say the poster is misunderstanding Adams' position. As far as I can see, he didn't use his pseudonyms to do things like post positive reviews of his work (which would be wrong because it would imply that the review is from a third party). All he seemed to be doing, at least in the Reddit threads he participated in, was to explain Adams' positions and debate Adams' critics. This doesn't seem like sock puppetry to me.

nhangen 16y ago

1. Am I the only one that was expecting a video with real sock puppets? I'm feeling behind the times. 2. I thought it was great. He was articulate and mostly transparent, and more importantly - I got the sense that he was able to repel the onslaught without becoming an asshole. I'm not necessarily an Adams fan, but in this case, I see no evil.

giberson 16y ago

I would argue you can have a more honest discussion in the shoes of a bystander than in the shoes of the author.

jerrya 16y ago
Isn't that a common theme in many works of fiction?

statictype 16y ago

I looked at his comment history on reddit. I don't see him doing anything shady. He's defending his arguments while referring to himself in the third person. He's not using it to promote his books or other products.

mdpm 16y ago

This wasn't an issue of morality, or even of rule-breaking; rather one of community standards (for mefi). Not too much integrity was on display here by Adams. They simply asked him to either operate as himself, or cease the pretense of being someone else. I think the most illuminating comment of of the thread was the rephrasing made here: http://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/gqzgx/dilbert_creator_outed_for_using_sock_puppets_on/c1pms4p http://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/gqzgx/dilbert_creato... He wasn't using anonymity for the sake of interacting or learning, while negating the effect of his 'fame' on discourse. He seemingly joined to leap into the fray in his defense, quite aggressively. I guess the admins at mefi weren't quite wanting this sort of thing: http://www.reddit.com/user/plannedchaos http://www.reddit.com/user/plannedchaos to happen.

moomin 16y ago

Is it just me, or was Scott Adams channelling Dogbert?

warmfuzzykitten 16y ago

More like, metafilter outed as tedious cesspool of uninformed opinion and snark.