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Home » Now everyone on the internet knows you’re a dog – or a troll or imposter or bot or paid liar

Now everyone on the internet knows you’re a dog – or a troll or imposter or bot or paid liar

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s a saying that’s probably as old as the internet:

But sometimes it’s possible to tell. And X has just made it a lot easier by rolling out a feature – first temporary but which supposedly will become permanent – that reveals the location of accounts as well as other facts such as where they were first created. And it turns out not just that there were some imposters in the political sphere, there were a ton of them:

And it turns out that some of the most “pro-American” American First or America Only accounts are located in the patriotic states of Turkey, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. …

I’m sure you will not be surprised to learn that the most aggressive Jew-hating “America First” accounts are actually based in Islamic countries. …

“Counter-AIPAC,” which rails against foreign Jews subverting American politics through AIPAC, turns out to be, get this, an Egyptian subverting American politics by representing himself as America First. …

Other accounts seeking to subvert American politics are owned by leftists in Canada. But they claim they’re rootin’-tootin’ American patriots. …

One odd thing: There are apparently a lot of “Native American” accounts calling for hatred and violence against the white man for stealing their land. They turn out to be based in… Bangladesh.

Lots more at the link, as well as here and here and well, just about everywhere on the right. This is my first post on the subject, and I don’t plan for it to be my last. There is so much food for thought here it will take some time to digest it.

It’s clear that a great deal of what transpires online, especially in social media such as Twitter (“X”), is fake. We already knew that – but the question has always been, how much? And what are the forces behind this? And what’s to be done about it?

One thing I strongly believe is that although many of the accounts may be fake, they do influence real people to think a certain way and to think they are part of a larger movement (a partly illusory one). Again, we’ve all known this, but the proportions of fake to real are important and that is unknown as yet. Will it ever be known?

Comments

Now <i>everyone</i> on the internet knows you’re a dog – or a troll or imposter or bot or paid liar — 29 Comments

  1. The internet, like TV has sunk to a very low level. Both TV and the interne have such magnificent potential for educating and enriching peoples’ lives. Both have become vast wastelands with only a few bright spots.

    Social media is an easy way to stay in touch with family and friends. But the crooks, pranksters, ideologues, nutcases, pedophiles, bots, propagandists, and more have turned it into a bad joke and even a dangerous place for those not on guard.

    Online scams and frauds have become common and require constant vigilance and skepticism.

    Seeing what has become of the internet, I am sure that AI will become an even better tool for all those who want to steal, mislead, propagandize, lure, and other nefarious uses.

    It all makes me sad. It exposes how rotten human nature can be, and makes me wonder if eventually, the only way to stay rational, informed, and safe is offline.

  2. One odd thing: There are apparently a lot of “Native American” accounts calling for hatred and violence against the white man for stealing their land. They turn out to be based in… Bangladesh.
    _______
    Well, Bangladesh is Indian, in a sense.

  3. So all the posts on the Daily Mail about MAGA infighting and Trump losing it, are based on False Flag post on X? Well, I didn’t/don’t believe what the DM was pedaling anyway.

  4. This information conforms to my suspicion that a large proportion of “trolls” especially at conservative websites are paid and/or dispatched. I do not think there are really a great number of rando libs who comment there for months or in some cases years on end just for kicks.

  5. FOAF:

    I think at a big blog such as Instapundit, especially with Disqus comments, many trolls are paid. Here, though, I don’t think that’s the case. Although some probably are paid, I think most trolls here are people doing it on their own, for kicks and annoyance.

  8. This presents a big opportunity for some entity to establish themselves as a true and credible purveyor of news, information, and truth. Odds are that the usual suspects, the so-called MSM, will totally miss it.

  9. I think X only turned on the country of origin display for an hour or so. It would be very good for that to be displayed permanently.

  10. Art Deco is a Poo-Poo Head
    Poo-Poo Head, Poo-Poo Head
    Art Deco is a Poo-Poo Head
    Poo, Poo, Poo!

    (Just trollin’ for kicks and annoyance 😉

  11. I think at a big blog such as Instapundit, especially with Disqus comments, many trolls are paid

    Gateway Pundit and Reddit also. Especially Reddit.
    Reddit is Trump hate. Many Gateway act pro America or right wing but are full of childish insults.

    20 second Troll farm vid.

  12. I think X only turned on the country of origin display for an hour or so

    No, they turned if off for an hour or so to fix a problem, it is still there.

  13. This is a good tool for statistical analysis, but I wouldn’t trust it on an individualized basis.

    If someone is knowledgeable and careful, they can effectively mask their location. First they have to use a VPN, but they also need to take some other precautions. If their computer and browser are configured to use GPS, wi-fi and bluetooth scanning to determine locations, those can be ferreted out by Google and browsers. Also time zones, language settings and things like that can help track down a user’s actual location.

    Most people likely won’t even think of these things so for saying “[x percentage] of people pretending to be in the US actually aren’t” it would be pretty accurate, but you can’t assume that because Twitter shows someone’s location as the US, that’s absolutely where they are. They may just be savvy enough to have turned off or altered all the things that can be used to determine their true location.

  15. It’s not that simple with the “About this account” feature. It depends on what is put on the righthand side of the entry “Account based in”. If there is an empty space, then the account’s location is genuine. If there is an exclamation point, things are different. If it is in a circle, then clicking on the circle tells you that the owner seems to travel a lot, i.e., that the IP is changing but apparently genuine and no prox or VN involved. If the exclamation point is in a shield, then clicking on it gives the info that the account owner apparently uses a proxy or VPN. So if “Account based in ” says, e.g., Iceland (Europe), but has a shield with exclamation point right of it, it’s pretty likely that the account owner does not reside in Iceland but fakes his location. And that means that every troll and bot can set the location to his liking as long as people don’t care about the accompanying info. Right now a lot of trolls and bots may have been outed but it will only take a short time until they will hide again.

  16. Dog? Cat?

    (Hey, what about us bears…?)

    Aaand, just so that we’re up-to-date on the latest Zionist atrocity(TM)…

    “Heavy rain floods Gaza Strip – Hamas blames Israel;
    “Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem claims Gazans are ‘drowning in their tents’ after rain and accuses Israel of causing a humanitarian crisis, renewing Hamas’s repeated weather-based propaganda narrative.”—
    https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/418338

    (Can’t wait to hear about the pothole complaints…)

  18. I assume it’s relatively easy to determine if a user is accessing a service with a VPN since large VPN providers use specific blocks of IPs (meaning that an IP within a range of given subnet group can only be from a certain VPN provider). So just revealing that a given X account is primarily accessing the service with a VPN is useful in terms of assessing trustworthiness.

    Of course there are all sorts of open (unsecure) proxies all over the internet too. And it can be a bit more difficult to know if someone is using some random proxy since HTTP header information can be spoofed relatively trivially. You’d have to check the IP to see if it accepts being used as an open proxy I think.

    At any rate, it’s enlightening to provide more information (short of a full doxing anyway) on some of the more active, controversial accounts that claim they’re located in a given place in order to provide some heft to their arguments. In particular when someone is claiming to be an American citizen while making all sorts of contraversial political posts.

  19. FOAF, no doubt….…

    Hey, speaking of Hamas’s—fireside?—theatricals…here’s “Biden” trying “his” hand at “Show Time”…

    “REMEMBER ALL THE ILLEGALS SLEEPING IN AIRPORTS? The Biden Administration Was Behind It All.”—
    https://instapundit.com/758654/

    File under: DPOTUSwood

  20. I’m going to do a post about this very thing – I swear, there hasn’t been a reveal with this much embarrassment, screaming and hysteria since the scene in the movie M*A*S*H where they pulled down the tent where Major Houlihan was showering.
    Indeed, no one knows you’re a dog on the internet…
    Until the mask slips or the tent is pulled down.
    Anyone also remember the blogger posing as a gay woman in Baghdad … who started an on-line romance with another gay woman blogger … somewhere or other … and it turned out they were both straight men, cosplaying as young lesbians?

  21. Sgt. Mom:

    I don’t remember that one – but it doesn’t surprise me in the least.

    The internet had given me a lot: this blog, and certain relationships. But on the whole, I think the internet has hurt society and especially young people.

  22. I’ll have to look it up, myself – for the specifics. I only remember the general hilarity afterwards, and comments along the lines of “The internet! Where the lesbians are straight men and the cute high school girls are FBI agents!”

  25. I still say AI agents are going to kick this whole thing up several notches. Agents may be the death of the blogs as we know them.

    Imagine AI training on an entire blog, getting the feel of the conversations, the personalities, and inventing AI personalities custom made to interact and shift the conversations to its own ends.

    AI is really good at imitation and extrapolation. It’s part of why it is prone to hallucination.

    On the internet, nobody knows you’re an AI agent.

  27. David Foster:

    AI will continue to improve, which most critics of AI ignore. Also, the agent scenario is not about perfection but about quantity.

    neo is a hardworking, smart blogger. God bless her! WordPress does give her tools to handle standard spam/troll situations. But those tools won’t be sufficient IMO to handle the AI agent swarms which are coming.

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