New Scientist on sock puppets

Posted by Tim Lambert on January 6, 2006
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New Scientist has an article on sock puppets (subscription required):

IF YOU thought sock puppets were made merely for the amusement of small children, think again. In cyberspace, a sock puppet is a vandal’s alter ego, an additional account that they use to pose as a different user and tamper with facts and dishonestly promote alternative viewpoints.

The article ends with:

And one academic was caught using a sock puppet to review his own book and to pose as one of his students. It’s not just small children that sock puppets keep amused.

They don’t mention the name of this academic, but we know who it is.

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Comments

  1. #1 Chris Jarrett
    January 7, 2006

    Hey Tim, did you catch this article?

    http://insidehighered.com/news/2005/12/06/bradford

    In particular, “But the more attention Bradford got, the more people started asking questions, and the more peculiarities arose. In September, Lucas Sayre, a second year law student and the head of Indy Law Net, noticed that Bradford’s comments were coming from the same IP address as posts from other user names. Sayre, who had taken a course with Bradford and said he was a great professor, questioned Bradford about it, and Bradford admitted to using fake names to post “cheap shots, schoolyard bickering,” Sayre said.”