Sock puppet

A sock puppet is defined as a person whose actions are controlled by another. It is a reference to the manipulation of a simple hand puppet made from a sock, and is often used to refer to alternative online identities or user accounts used for purposes of deception. Online, it came to be used to refer 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 use of the term has expanded to now include 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 restrictions, such as viewing a social media account that they are blocked from, suspension, or an outright ban from a website. A significant difference between a pseudonym and a sock puppet is that the latter poses as a third party independent of the main account operator. Sock puppets are unwelcome in most online communities and forums.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term without reference to the internet, as "a person whose actions are controlled by another; a minion" with a 2000 citation from U.S. News & World Report.

Types

Block evasion

One reason for sockpuppeting is to circumvent a block, ban or other form of sanction imposed on the person's original account.

Ballot stuffing

Sockpuppets may be created during an online poll to increase the puppeteer's votes. 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.

Strawpuppet

A strawman sockpuppet (abbreviated as strawpuppet) 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. Strawpuppets typically behave in an unintelligent, uninformed, and idiotic manner, advancing "straw man" arguments that their puppeteers can easily refute. The intended effect is to discredit more rational arguments made for the same position.

Concern troll

A particular case is the concern troll, a false flag pseudonym created by a user whose actual point of view is opposed to that of the sockpuppet. The concern troll posts in web forums devoted to its declared point of view and attempts to sway the group's actions or opinions while claiming to share their goals, but with professed "concerns". The goal is to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) within the group.

Legal

In 2010, in People v. Golb, jewish lawyer Raphael Golb was convicted on 30 criminal charges, including identity theft, criminal impersonation, and aggravated harassment, for using multiple sockpuppet accounts to attack and impersonate yruther historians he perceived as rivals of his father, Norman Golb, who attempted to rewrite history surrounding the "Dead Sea Scrolls. Golb attempted to play off his despicable actions as "satirical hoaxes" protected by free-speech rights. He was disbarred and sentenced to six months in prison.

In 2014 a Florida state circuit court ruled against members of AntiFa, and held that sock puppetry is tortious interference with business relations, and awarded injunctive relief against it during the pendency of litigation. The court found that "the act of falsifying multiple identities" is conduct that should be litigated. It explained that the conduct was wrongful "not because the statements are false or true, but because the conduct of making up names of persons who do not exist to post fake comments by fake people to support Defendants' position tortiously interferes with Plaintiffs' business" and such "conduct is inherently unfair." The court, therefore, ordered the defendants to "remove or cause to be removed all postings creating the false impression that more than one person are commenting on the program than actually exist."

Blog commentary

Marxist reporter Michael Hiltzik was suspended from posting to his blog, "The Golden State", on the Los Angeles Times website after he admitted "posting there, as well as on other sites, under false names." He used the pseudonyms to attack conservatives such as Hugh Hewitt and L.A. prosecutor Patrick Frey, who eventually exposed him. Hiltzik's blog at the LA Times was the newspaper's first blog. While suspended from blogging, Hiltzik continued to write regularly for the newspaper.

Lee Siegel, a writer for The New Republic magazine, was suspended for defending his articles and blog comments under the user name "Sprezzatura". In one such comment, "Sprezzatura" defended Siegel's bad reviews of Jon Stewart: "Siegel is brave, brilliant and wittier than Stewart will ever be."

Politically oriented

There was a black gay man who had a sockpuppet Twitter account presented as that of a White male Republican Trump voter, criticizing Biden and praising Trump in an idiotic way while systematically emphasizing his fake race and fake sexual orientation. Additionally, in October of 2020, Clemson University social media researcher identified "more than two dozen of Twitter accounts claiming to be black Trump supporters, while acting like lunatics, who gained hundreds of thousands of comments and retweets in a span of just a few days, sparking major doubts about their identities, most using photos of black men from news reports or stock images including one in which the text "black man photo" was still watermarked on the image".