Dilbert creator outed for using sock puppets on Metafilter and Reddit | Hacker News Reader

Dilbert creator outed for using sock puppets on Metafilter and Reddit

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40 pointsFlemlord36 comments

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.

It is called astroturfing and it is a bad thing to do.

Well no it's actually not. Astroturfing would be if he had 100 sock puppets.

Yea, that would have been seriously bad. In this case it would not be anywhere near as bad, but it is still bad.

But that goes back to my original question of "Why is it bad?"

The point I'm trying to make is we shouldn't automatically assume something is bad just because our first instinct says so. In this case our first instinct reacts to misleading people because that's usually a bad thing. Usually it's used to hurt people.

But in the case of Scott Adams his sock puppet isn't hurting anyone. So it's neutral at best. So then the question is between neutral and acceptable.

For this to be acceptable it has to do some good. There are cases when lying does an overall good so the questions is whether this is one of those cases.

If you hold truth as a value than this does a societal good. Because many people would automatically dismiss a defense of Scott Adams ideas coming from Scott Adams. Those same people would listen to an anonymous person. So Scott Adams' sock puppet allows his ideas to get a fair hearing in the debate.

Which is why I don't see the evil in a famous person having a sock puppet

(I feel the need to say I AM NOT a Scott Adams sock puppet...just for the record)

I am.

In the Reddit thread, another MeFi administrator sums it pretty nicely: MetaFilter has rules about that sort of thing because it wants to encourage a certain kind of community. Other sites may have different rules.

"On Metafilter, specifically, deliberately impersonating a disinterested third party to get in arguments about yourself or something you've got a personal stake in is a problem, yes. It's anathema to any kind of sense of community and continuity of identity. Other places can have their own rules or lack thereof. The heterogeneity of the Internet is part of what makes it interesting, and certainly no one is or should be compelled to be a member of Metafilter or Reddit or any other site the rules or community guidelines of which they don't like."

Direct link: http://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/gqzgx/dilbert_creato...

There's a difference between rules/law and morality. I don't dispute what he did was against the Metafilter rules but that doesn't in itself make it wrong from a moral standpoint. At least no more wrong than people who post off topic stuff on HN or any number of other minor infractions.

You could argue that it's morally wrong because most other Mefi-ists assume that the rules are being followed, so breaking the rules is deceptive. But Metafilter discussions bore the hell out of me, so I don't really know what the hell they think.

As far as mefi's guildlines go and my job responsibilities go, morality doesn't really come into it. I don't consider it my mandate to ensure or enforce moral correctness or any such thing.

That what he did was against the site's rules and a violation of the Metafilter community's shared expectations of behavior on the site is why it was a problem on Metafilter, and why we contacted him to tell him to cut it out.

It would be similar to Matt Cutts registering some username and defending Google's efforts at defeating webspam (or telling us that Matt Cutts is a pretty cool guy). Surely any opposition to this doesn't defy logic, so what is the difference? He didn't merely create a fake account and post under it. Scott Adams created a fake persona and used it to help persuade people when it comes to things related to Scott Adams.

I'm saying I think the fact that he defended himself is exactly what makes it moral. See here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2452634

That doesn't make it moral.

>>"Because many people would automatically dismiss a defense of Scott Adams ideas coming from Scott Adams" (from the link)

He needn't deceive people in order to defend his own case. That doesn't make any sense. If people want to take what he says with a grain of salt because he has an agenda that is their decision to make -- and rightfully so.

Being deceptive so that people won't think you're being deceptive is illogical.

But see your logic is exactly the problem.

Ideas are opinion. Agenda doesn't matter when you are expressing an opinion. Because the opinion is biased by its nature.

It matters when you are claiming to express a fact because then your agenda might lead you to pick and choose what facts you give. Facts require impartiality and that's why having an agenda is relevant there.

But Adams wasn't giving facts he was giving an opinion so his agenda is irrelevant and the fact that you would dismiss his opinion because of some perceived agenda demonstrates exactly why he'd need a sock puppet for his ideas to get a fair hearing.

I didn't say that I would dismiss his opinion. I'm just trying to get across why I think what he did was misleading and that he didn't even need to do it in the first place. To give you an example that you can relate to better:

If there was a post on HN about Tom's Tech Blog and commenters were saying that "your site sucks" do you think it would be appropriate/moral for you to create a new account and tell everyone that they are wrong? Why not just post under TomOfTTB? It's not as if some random from the net is in any better position to defend yourself than you are.

Scott Adams is both a brand and a public figure, and it seems as though he got confused about which of those two things he went onto MeFi to defend. In retrospect, being identifiable and defending himself from the start held the potential to increase the reputation of both his brand and his personal identity. But not only did he botch the defense of his identity, he harmed his brand, then compounded the damage by his comments after revealing his identity.

From the nature of his comments, though, it doesn't seem likely he could have managed the finesse of a defense of both himself and his brand had he came out identifiable from the start. The best choice in his personal case may have been to ignore the criticism and if he really felt the need to respond to the barbs, respond from the bully pulpit of his media empire. You know, something like Catbert pointing at his bank statement and saying "Scoreboard!"

There's nothing wrong with a famous person having psudeo-anonymous accounts that aren't tied to their real identity, but to then defend themselves as if they were not connected... Well, that's just not cool.

Cortex, who posted what you quoted, was drawing that line. Be anonymous and on Metafilter, but avoid commenting on yourself as somebody else. Or he can be himself (which lots of "famous" people have done both on Reddit and Metafilter, and HN for that matter.)

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.

I'm actually kind of confused why you think it isn't a problem to use dishonestly, since speaking as if you're not person X is dishonest, isn't "harmful" in a community or to a discussion. And, honestly, I can't think of many reasons I'd want the famous person to lie to defend themselves. If it's defensible and they're famous, lots of intelligent and well-spoken people will be there to their defense.

See John Lott/Mary Rosh and other cases where people have been found out. (Or authors using fake names to give 5-star reviews on Amazon; or game devs posting reviews with fake names on metacritic.)

First on the whether it's wrong I wrote a whole big thing here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2452634

But on your point about letting other people jump in and defend him I don't agree with you. When Scott Adams posts something I assume he's thought through what he said. So while a bunch of people might agree with him they won't have thought the issue through as well as he has. So it's entirely plausible that he could defend his ideas better than other people could.

As far as things like Amazon reviews or Game reviews that's a completely different thing because the person doing that is trying to get money out of other people. So if they are wrong and the game/book/whatever doesn't deserve a five star review they'll have caused harm to the purchaser. Adams is just defending ideas which doesn't do such harm.

What do you think of authors going pseudonymously onto Amazon and posting 5-star reviews of their work? Of companies doing that for their products? Of political astroturfing?

Sock puppetting by a famous author is toward the least slimy end of a pretty slimy continuum.

hmmm, ammonia is good, so is bleach, put 'em together and noooooo

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...

Direct link to Scott Adams owning up to being Scott Adams: http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-a-Real-Education...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hi, I greatly appreciate your explanation, which I do think explains the "how you knew who plannned chaos was" in a very reasonable manner.

I'm not a member of mefi, and if you folks frown heavily on Adams' sort of impersonation, that's your community rules, and fine.

But it wouldn't be my community rules to have a moderator out him.

I guess I would like to think that his behavior, while perhaps not exemplary, would get a pass from the outing, because I suspect that such behavior goes on all the time, and you aren't policing, consciously or not, the behavior of people with less famous names.

I would prefer a community where "famous people" who might be mentioned are welcome as participants and I can only see that happening under pseudonyms. Because hey, they should be able to internet too. And a small aspect of that is that as on any online forum, there will be time they act like jerks, or so you and I might classify. And such behavior really shouldn't rise to national mockery.

His statements and the dialog from everyone were actually somewhat interesting.

But as far as that thread went, and your behavior while moderating it, the thread went downhill into a Scott Adams bashfest by the second and sixth's comments.

As a moderator, you allowed ad hominem celebrity bashing in as part of your community rules, but you disliked it when said celebrity comes in to defend himself and suddenly he is outed because he violated your rules.

Well, ... I think your rules that essentially do not permit this guy to defend himself unless he writes under his own name are lousy rules because no one else had to write under their name.

You didn't examine who the pseudonyms of the other commenters were. For all we know, it's his ex-wife, or some feminist blogger still angry with him, or someone else with an agenda.

I don't know what common mefi behavior is -- I think in your position I would have either ignored it, or as a moderator, asked everyone to get back on track and knock off the pile-on.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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_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 to happen.

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.

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

Isn't that a common theme in many works of fiction?

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

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

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