Everything you ever wanted to know about sock puppets but were afraid to ask…
Well, maybe not everything, but enough to give you a good overview.  🙂
Part of the cleaning-the-attic project, this article covers the different sources I discovered relating to Perception Control in the Internet Age using pseudonyms, “meat” puppets, sock puppets and more….

By Virginia McClaughry

~ Researched in 2017-2020, first published 20 January 2024 ~

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Note: If you’d like to see a listing of what is currently visible at this blog (besides Mike’s book The Reckoning for Earth) please see The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the McClaughry’s Blog

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The Librarian says –

Hi there! You are currently
In the Reading Library—>
Mind Control section.

Mind Control

What Makes Us “Tick”

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Perception Control in the Internet Age

Trying to Influence Human Behavior using:

pseudonyms,

“meat” puppets,

sock puppets

and more….

 

Introduction

historical precedents

MKULTRA Sub-project 84

Martin Orne

Martin Theodore Orne 1948 – Harvard freshman pic

Sub-Project 84 was found in Black Vault’s MKULTRA CD #1, Folder 17486. Here’s an OCR’d PDF I made of all its documents available –

• PDF – MKULTRA subproject 84 April 1958

Page 58 shows the original proposal dated April 21, 1958

Page 50 shows its approval date of April 29, 1958 with funds dispersed.

Page 23 shows that for 4 years there was a project titled: Investigation of Socially induced special states of consciousness under the direction of Dr. [blacked out].

Really look at that title.

Socially induced special states of consciousness.

And what, exactly, do you think those were? To put it simply, two types.

• Going into agreement with someone’s ideas
• Going out of agreement with someone’s ideas.

The interest was in HOW to artificially cause that to happen.

Of course, as with all these types of projects they ended up right back at square one.

You.

Even after they (the CIA, the British, the Canadians, etc. etc.) had done all kinds of experiments ranging from pain to pleasure driven? In the end, none of them could be said to work 100 percent of the time. This, of course means, there was not any kind of scientific law that “brainwashing” works.

Without YOUR AGREEMENT, it all came to nothing.

So, their square one became again, how to influence you to:

• disagree with who and what they want you to
• agree with who and what they want you to

There being this minor problem called what is – that is not subject to either one.

Ignoring such minor problems – and never ones to be all that innovative or original – the people driving this particular bus decided to do what they thought was copying of others (especially their real enemies) actions. I think the thought process was that if someone had changed their mind away from what these psychos wanted, it couldn’t possibly have been because of an actual harmonic of truth. It just couldn’t be that. (said with extreme sarcasm)

These people live as one deaf, dumb, and blind when it comes to what is. They look at what they could see or hear humanly only, and sometimes spiritually only. They then “figured” (literally) that all they had to do was copy what they saw or heard or “felt” and hey…Bob’s your uncle.

They win.

Not a bad idea, I suppose, taken in and of itself, but not one that will ever stand up to any kind of united human-spiritual challenge.

That’s the key.

Please remember that. And no, I do not mean any of the many religions with a seriously altered version of “God” spirituality while “human”, God forbid that (slang pun intended).

I mean simply…

You.

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There’s actually lots of historical precedents of this kind of behavior, all already well-covered here in other posts and articles. I chose just one of their “projects” to illustrate the rather over-extreme obsession with the idea of one person controlling a multitude of others minds – covertly.

As in – going out of their way to not let you know directly, face to face, what is their intention and plans towards you, and then taking their “disagreement” lumps and consequences like a man, as the saying goes. (It means to act like a mature person, instead of a severely undeveloped child.) You know the game.

In the old days, this was done first through verbal story-telling of names and people that never existed (as if they did) and that it was “history”, then these fictions were written as supposedly from Gods and aliens (when they weren’t – not that its impossible for an alien to write anything), that was a kind of “universal appeal to authority” logical fallacy. Meaning, it was meant to fuck with what you were thinking with to hopefully get you to make a decision using only what they tell you.

O-N-L-Y. Only.

As a friend of mine put it, in more modern parlance it’s a “I told you everything you need to know” kind of grifter/intelligence operation to gain your agreement without true discernment.

Later, this all graduated into the more specific use people in a current time using anywhere from “ancient” to totally made up pen names or pseudonyms.

That continued for quite some time, but was limited by access. Not everyone could read or easily had access to all these gems of Perception Control attempts. Let alone access to any REAL gems that were either burned, buried, or hidden in some way to KEEP people from ever seeing them.

And then came the internet.

Note: You might think that has been a bad thing, but it actually hasn’t. Or rather, it won’t be in the long run. Just wait, you’ll see.

The Internet Age

Let’s start with something recent.

Specifically, that California passed a law that went into effect July 2019 banning the undisclosed use of “bots” to communicate or interact with a person for knowingly deceiving that person to influence commercial transactions or vote in an election. (ref: jdsupra)

The election part is self explanatory but what, exactly, is a commercial transaction?

commercial transaction. An interaction between two or more parties in which goods, services or something of value is exchanged for some type of remuneration.

Ok, so what does remuneration mean?

It comes from the word remunerate, which means:

Let’s look at commercial transaction again now –

commercial transaction. An interaction between two or more parties in which goods, services or something of value is exchanged for some type of remuneration.

Make sense now?

Ok, so how about this as a modern example. Person A gives person B access and creative control/moderation of Person A’s website. Person B sends money to Person A via an online money transfer site, like Paypal for example. That’s a form of remuneration. That’s a commercial transaction, by definition.

But, it goes further than that. Or it could…

A recent article in the National Review by Noah Rothman talks about the idea of remuneration as applied to social media. It’s a review of a book by Kevin Williams that starts out with a warning to the reader:

The original sin of the American intellectual is his desire to be popular. (Kevin Williamson’s Revolt against the Hivemind,” 25 July 2019)

A sin which is the GOAL of most propaganda experts.

From a post here titled: Are You Worried About “Being Discredited”… August 2018. [new emphasis added in different parts than original post]

Living life according to a fear of being “discredited” or marginalizing the truth in order to curry favor from gaggles of people, is no life at all.

Professional propagandists know this is how you create weakness in others so that propaganda can take hold or “work” on them.

…the neurotic anxiously seeks the esteem and affection of the largest number of people…

– Propaganda: the Formation of Men’s Attitudes by Jacques Ellul. You can read it here.
As quoted in: Field Guide For Whistleblowers and Truth-Tellers – Tactics 1: Propaganda, Discernment and Decisions

Propagandists know that their propaganda will not work unless the person succumbs to this “need” for esteem and affection.

Pallative care worker Bronnie Ware discussed what she had learned in her work. She found there were five common themes of regret among patients as they confronted dying.

The number one regret  –

“I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself and not the life others expected of me.”

Do you want to be that person?

Regretting…

Or do you want to be the person who did have the courage.

It’s not too late. You can still be that person.

End of excerpt.

I think that it is very important to point out here what makes propaganda not work, or, put another way, what state of being causes any and all propaganda to have no effect whatsoever?

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Propaganda can succeed only when man feels challenged.

It can have no influence when the individual is stabilized…

Can play only on individuals more or less intensely involved in social currents.

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Note: We’ll get more into the role propaganda plays in all this in the next section.

So, when Kevin warns his readers –

The original sin of the American intellectual is his desire to be popular. (Kevin Williamson’s Revolt against the Hivemind,” 25 July 2019)

And you now understand that a stabilized person who won’t allow themselves to be controlled by any neurotic “need” to be popular?

You see at once the #1 real function and role of today’s “social” internet media.

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To cause people to feel unstable and challenged.

utilizing social currents.

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It follows that the “pay” for going along with this current or pack is to NOT feel that way.

There are of course nuances and grey areas and flipped backwards ideas in this whole arena, but the above is the #1 problem with today’s social media. I feel unstable and challenged, accept the herd mentality, I don’t feel unstable and challenged. Both are contrived.

That is the simplicity of what is trying to be done to people.

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Now, taking this idea of remuneration mentioned in the definition of a commercial transaction and showing how it relates to modern propaganda tactics in social media – check this out.

Noah writes (re: Kevin’s book) –

In his telling, social media functions as a simple economy in which attention sought constitutes labor and attention paid amounts to remuneration. — 

That’s very interesting.

It fits well with some of the basic mantras of professional propagandists that Jacques Ellul laid out so many years ago. If we take Kevin’s economical metaphor for manipulation of social media, then these two points by Ellul really stand out.

Propaganda …is an enterprise for perverting the significance of events and of insinuating false intentions.

Maneuvers take place behind protective screens of words on which public attention is fixed.

So, if the commodity being bought-and-sold on the internet IS ATTENTION, and there is real world life-enrichment by actual remuneration going on?

It follows that the dark side of this is to try and falsely drive good attention away from people and negative attention onto them. I say false because of the use of droves of sockpuppets run by a proportionately very few individuals.

Something I don’t think anyone else has thought of, is that this sort of behavior IS NOT PROTECTED BY THE FIRST AMENDMENT.

Why?

Simple really.

I’ll explain by telling you a joke I told someone back in the days (2001) when I was single-handedly taking on literally droves of sockpuppets in an internet forum called FZA.org. I was busting which ones were run by ONE individual or another, which ones were “shared” accounts, all by simple direct perception – true discernment. I was later given the logs of the website by its owner and it was hilarious to see just how accurate I had been. I began publicly posting on newsgroups what these nefarious intelligence types had been up to, how often they would even talk to themselves using two or more sockpuppets and so on.

More on this later, but what happened next was –

I was then threatened with legal action by one of the individuals (who was now busted) to which I responded something on the order of: “Yeah. That’ll work. I can just see it now in court: “Your honor, I’d like to call Betty’s Busy Day and Mr. Potato Head to the stand.”

Now that’s humor.

They were not amused, because just like that?

They had lost all credibility.

Note: And yes, they did shut the hell up with the bogus “legal threats”.

The point I was making in that humor, at the time, is that THESE ARE NOT REAL PEOPLE.

Therefore, they have no rights.

Get it?

Same goes here.

Sockpuppet identities, whether mimicking real people or not, ARE NOT PROTECTED SPEECH. Only a real person has, or could have that. Imagine that real person trying to explain in court why they have 100 identities, some of which are talking TO each other, instead of either posting as themselves or with a pseudonym that is known to be them.

If we look more closely at the new California law, you’ll notice that exact point is covered. It says:

California new law – 17941.

(a) It shall be unlawful for any person to use a bot to communicate or interact with another person in California online, with the intent to mislead the other person about its artificial identity for the purpose of knowingly deceiving the person about the content of the communication in order to incentivize a purchase or sale of goods or services in a commercial transaction or to influence a vote in an election. A person using a bot shall not be liable under this section if the person discloses that it is a bot.

See that? IF the person discloses it.

The law continues and says HOW it has to be disclosed.

(b) The disclosure required by this section shall be clear, conspicuous, and reasonably designed to inform persons with whom the bot communicates or interacts that it is a bot.

So, what would that mean? Person A uses a pseudonym of…let’s say… J.Swift to publicly post things. They would need to publicly disclose that pseudonym belongs to them – their real, legal identity/name. If they do? They’re fine.

But what if that same person discloses one or two of their pseudonyms, but also uses other pseudonyms, lots of them, that they do not disclose?

In California, if they are influencing an election or commercial transaction that person is guilty of a crime on multiple counts.

So, if we factor in Kevin’s refreshingly updated take on remuneration, a key component of a commercial transaction, as being ATTENTION gained or taken away in social media, well.

I wonder just how long it will be before that idea shows up in California Courts by some intelligent lawyer seeking criminal conviction of those running sockpuppets. Using them to falsely and unfairly influence social media against or for someone in order to wreck or falsely elevate their lives as a result, in real-world financial ways.

Noah points out something else very, very perspicacious* of Kevin in his book:

[Kevin] Williamson’s innovation is to treat the social-media environment as a marketplace in which the chief commodity is outrage.

*perspicacious – having a ready insight into and understanding of things.

A really good example of the contrivance of that to blacken someone’s reputation and engineer that outrage is some scenes from the tv show Homeland. Right now, I am just queing the video to the key scene where after all their fake accounts are back up, the “team leader” says –

Homeland Season 6 Episode 10 (2017)

2024 note: An ongoing issue I have been discovering as I go through our archives, yet another video I had linked to disappears. I have replaced it with a different one.

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Harold D. Lasswell –

“A handy rule for arousing hate is, if at first they do not enrage, use an atrocity. ”

– Lasswell, 1927 Propaganda Technique in World War, You can view the 1938 reprint at Hathitrust.

The sockpuppet team leader in the video says:

“Get OUTRAGED“

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As in, it’s complete bullshit.

Let’s look a little deeper into the idea of using this as part of INTELLIGENCE black operations.

First, to do what with these sockpuppets?

Propaganda –

• “…serves up the plain fact, but does so only for the sake of establishing a pretense, and only as an example of the interpretation that it supports with that fact.
• …[propaganda] should be confined to intentions, to the moral realm, to values, to generalities
• The necessary falsehoods…are in the realm of intentions and interpretations…
  This is the real realm of the lie; but it is exactly here that it cannot be detected…
  [because] no proof can be furnished where motivations or intentions are concerned or interpretation of a fact is involved.
• Propaganda …is an enterprise for perverting the significance of events and of insinuating false intentions.
• Propaganda never can reveal its true projects and plans…
• Propaganda must serve instead as a veil for such projects, masking true intentions.
• It must be in effect a smokescreen.
• Maneuvers take place behind protective screens of words on which public attention is fixed.
• For a long time propagandists have recognized that lying must be avoided.
• If one falsifies a fact, one may be confronted with unquestionable proof to the contrary. .
• …Without credibility, it will fail.

– Propaganda: the Formation of Men’s Attitudes by Jacques Ellul, 1965. You can read it here.

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The use of Sockpuppet accounts (fake online identities) is integral to the above techniques.

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Joseph P. Farrell wrote an article on internet shills.
An internet shill is a person who is in on a scam.

Joseph P. Farrell, Of Internet Shills –

The goal is to make the owner or contributor to the website look ridiculous.

I began to suspect that I was somehow a target… I dismissed the idea.

But Mr. S.D. shared two articles these past two weeks that seem to indicate that my initial suspicions were perhaps justified…

Five Eyes online Manipulation

How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations

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For your convenience, I am posting excerpts from the two articles referred to –

Edward Snowden is a former National Security Agency contractor who leaked documents revealing secret government agencies using the internet to attack people. Glenn Greenwald is a reporter for The Intercept, who wrote articles on those documents. These articles are from February 2014.

Before you look at them, understand that the basic definition of a False Flag Operation is:

A false flag operation is simply an action in which the perpetrator intends for the blame (or credit) to be placed on a different party. The term originally comes from the naval concept of flying another country’s flag to deceive and confuse other ships.

They rely completely on propaganda.

So if we look at what Ellul said here more closely –

Propaganda …is an enterprise for perverting the significance of events and of insinuating false intentions.

You can see that is exactly what a “false flag” operation is doing. Now let’s look at these articles –

Five Eyes online Manipulation

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I highly suggest you read the actual document I just made easily accessible because….

The use of Sockpuppet accounts (fake online identities) is integral to the above techniques.

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It is also called “Persona Management”.

Exclusive: Military’s ‘persona’ software cost millions, used for ‘classified social media activities’ – February 2011

Raw Story recently reported that the US Air Force had solicited private sector vendors for something called “persona management software.” Such a technology would allow single individuals to command virtual armies of fake, digital “people” across numerous social media portals.

These “personas” were to have detailed, fictionalized backgrounds, to make them believable to outside observers, and a sophisticated identity protection service was to back them up, preventing suspicious readers from uncovering the real person behind the account. They even worked out ways to game geolocating services, so these “personas” could be virtually inserted anywhere in the world, providing ostensibly live commentary on real events, even while the operator was not really present.

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Feds Plotted Invasion of Social Media- March 2011

The computer program the government was seeking would allow a handful of operators to control a vast army of fictitious online personalities on social-media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. And one suggestion from a contractor hoping to win the bid involved creating fake profiles for real people — without their consent — to track or smear targeted individuals.

The Air Force request for the “Online Persona Management Service” posted last year on a federal contracting website, a screen shot of which is still available online, read:

Software will allow 10 personas per user, replete with background , history, supporting details, and cyber presences [sic] that are technically, culturally and geographacilly [sic] consistent. Individual applications will enable an operator to exercise a number of different online persons from the same workstation and without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries. Personas must be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world and can interact through conventional online services and social media platforms. The service includes a user friendly application environment to maximize the user’s situational awareness by displaying real-time local information.

Other requirements for the software included the ability to use “Virtual Private Networks” to provide unique IP addresses and locations for each of the fake online profiles. The program was also supposed to be able to protect “the identity of government agencies” engaged in the deception, while being able to blend into regular online traffic to provide “excellent cover and powerful deniability.”

HBGary was one of the “security” companies to pitch its services in an effort to win the contract. And its offer went even further than what the government was originally asking for. One of the leaked e-mails from the company, for example, reads:

Those names can be cross-referenced across Facebook, twitter, MySpace, and other social media services to collect information on each individual. Once enough information is collected this information can be used to gain access to these individuals[‘] social circles.

Even the most restrictive and security conscious of persons can be exploited. Through the targeting and information reconnaissance phase, a person’s hometown and high school will be revealed. An adversary can create a classmates.com account at the same high school and year and find out people you went to high school with that do not have Facebook accounts, then create the account and send a friend request.

Under the mutual friend decision, which is where most people can be exploited, an adversary can look at a target[‘]s friend list if it is exposed and find a target[‘]s most socially promiscuous friends, the ones that have over 300-500 friends, friend them to develop mutual friends before sending a friend request to the target. To that end friend’s account can be compromised and used to post malicious material to a target[‘]s wall. When choosing to participate in social media an individual is only as protected as his/her weakest friend.

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The use of Sockpuppet accounts (fake online identities) is integral to the above techniques.

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Sock puppet accounts unmasked by the way they write and post – April 2017

“Sock puppets” are the scourge of online discussion . Multiple accounts controlled by the same user can dominate comment forums and spread fake news.

…They identified the sock puppets by finding accounts that posted from the same IP address in the same discussion at similar times. This approach isn’t always possible, so they wanted to develop a tool that automatically detects sock puppets based only on publicly accessible posting data.

…They found that sock puppets contribute poorer quality content, writing shorter posts that are often downvoted or reported by other users. They post on more controversial topics, spend more time replying to other users and are more abusive. Worryingly, their posts are also more likely to be read and they are often central to their communities, generating a lot of activity.

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The Wild West days of Internet Social Media
the late 1990’s early 2000’s

Expanding further on what I described earlier in my personal experiences with some documentation –

I was one of the first targets of a streamlined sockpuppet discrediting campaign on a forum where supposed “ex” scientologists and supposed “independent” scientologists gathered. I had correctly identified this sock puppet phenomena long before most of the rest of the world even knew such a thing existed – and that’s what I called it even! I called the “people” that I perceived were simply disparate created identities run by one or two people – sock puppets.

The previous owner of the forum had, unbeknownst to everyone at the time, taken back control because of an expired domain registration. He then watched what was happening to me, and when he announced publicly that he had taken back control? He turned over all the forum logs to me to use as I saw fit.

Although I was a “newbie” and undoubtedly got many connections wrong when I used cross-IP association (I didn’t know what the hell I was doing at first) I was still quite pleased to find that even when I didn’t have these logs, I had nailed many of these “people” correctly back before the owner showed up.

How that must have amused him to watch me do that…

I’ll never forget one in particular – Paul Matulef. The guy had over one hundred different posting identities, and even held conversations between them! Names like “Betty’s Busy Day” and “Mr. Potatoe Head” were but a couple that he used. Once the forum was taken over by the owner and I was made a moderator, he called for a “vote” to dismiss me. You can imagine what I said about that…

In early 2002, after I had the logs, I posted a whole series of posts to Google Groups news alt.clearing.technology from part 1 to part 4B, as I recall. Almost all of them have mysteriously disappeared. The first one is still there though, and you can see another poster quoting my part 3A where I list out ALL of Paul Matulef’s identities he had used.

Do you know…that at one point someone had the gall to threaten me legally about exposing that?

That’s where I responded with the humor that I mentioned earlier, the “Your honor, I’d like to call Betty’s Busy Day and Mr. Potato head to the stand“. As you might imagine – there was never any legal action. It would have documented an extensive online directed harassment program, and you know “they” would never have wanted that to happen so early in their internet social-engineering days.

A humorous anecdote maybe, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that this was a VERY real (and quite vicious) campaign directed against one person that was not towing the “party” line.

Me.

People that have been caught using sock-puppets to engage in criminal stalking and harassment as well as other crimes rather than simple freedom of speech, have some interesting excuses that they try and re-characterize this cowardly behavior with.

First understand a main difference between the use of a pseudonym and the creation of a sockpuppet. The sockpuppet poses as an independent third-party unaffiliated with the main account operator. You can see why that more and more, sockpuppets are unwelcome in many online communities and forums.

Wikipedia –

Sockpuppets may be created during an online poll to submit multiple votes in favor of the puppeteer. 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.

That is also something that the guy with over a hundred posting identities did – Paul Matulef – he called for a “vote” to remove me as moderator. A guy with over a hundred sockpuppets wants a “vote”. Sure. That’ll be fair.

Not.

Continuing with Wikipedia –

A strawman sockpuppet 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. Strawman sockpuppets typically behave in an unintelligent, uninformed, or bigoted manner and advance “straw man” arguments that their puppeteers can easily refute. The intended effect is to discredit more rational arguments made for the same position. Such sockpuppets behave in a similar manner to Internet trolls.

A particular case is the concern troll, a false flag pseudonym created by a user whose actual point of view is opposed to the one that the sockpuppet claims to hold. 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.

In 2014 a Florida state circuit court 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 enjoined. 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 th[an] actually exist.”

The court also found, however, that the comments of the defendants “which do not create a false impression of fake patients or fake employees or fake persons connected to program (those posted under their respective names) are protected by The Constitution of the United State of America, First Amendment.”

Some historical examples of excuses that the kind of people who do this use when caught:

• “I’m just a guy with a computer and an opinion” (the guy mentioned already, Paul Matulef, who said that when confronted with evidence that he was using over a hundred different sockpuppets at a forum called fza.org back in 2001)
• Use of sockpuppets are “satirical hoaxes” protected by free-speech rights. (2010: the guy that said that one got disbarred)

Just a couple examples.

Now let’s fast forward to Operation Earnest Voice –

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So there’s that.

In today’s social media environment, the use of sockpuppets of course extends on into Twitter or “X” as it is now called. It has been called twitter-jacking.

To do a spot of sock puppetry or twitterjacking is so technically easy that, for some, it becomes irresistible. It can boost your reputation and damage someone else’s – until that horrible moment you get found out.

Exactly. Like what happened to Paul Matulef back in the newsgroups when I exposed him, before there was Twitter. Maybe that would have been called usenetjacking.

Speaking of usenet, the Church of Scientology’s OSA, its dirty tricks/Fair Game department (with Mr. Miscavige now the front man for the CIA front group of Scientology micromanaging it) pioneered a couple of tactics back on the new scientology newsgroups alt.clearing.technology and alt.religion.scientology. One was called sporge (that’s its own thing) but another tactic was driving “down” posts they didn’t want easily found.

Did you know this was picked up and spread to the most interesting places…?

UK’s The Register discusses that in 2014 and the technique I just described was still ongoing almost two decades later!

“We used one line in bash that allowed us to trivially create hundreds of [Disqus] accounts in a matter of seconds. The accounts are ordered by the number of likes so we could very easily bring a comment to the top or down to the bottom.“

Once they discovered the weight each site placed on making a given post popular, such as the number of times emailed, shared on Twitter, or commented, they used bash scripts to manipulate popular posts.

Another term is Meat Puppetry.

Wikipedia article –

A sock puppet (also called a “sock”) is an extra account used by someone for abusive purposes. This could be someone who is blocked, and created an extra account to be able to bypass the block and edit. Often, an abusive person will create several sock accounts so they can vote many times in a deletion discussion at WP:AFD or talk page discussion. In this case, it is used to make it look like they have more support than they really have. In other cases, they are created to edit war and bypass WP:3RR. Sock puppetry is dishonest, and makes Wikipedia less enjoyable for honest editors looking to build an encyclopedia.

The “sock master” is the original and authentic account, while a “sock puppet” is the deceptive account, basically a fake person. Since puppets aren’t “real”, they are handled differently than the master. This shouldn’t be confused with meat puppetry, which involves getting real people to pile on in a discussion and is a different kind of policy violation.

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Besides engaging in actual sockpuppetry, that “meat puppetry” is also a technique heavily used on youtube, Twitter, forums, and blogs of the current Scientology controlled opposition, as well as its associated front groups of the Process Church/Best Friends Animal Society, the Son of Sam murders pseudo-researchers, and so on and so forth.

While it is true that I could “unmask” most sockpuppets back on that forum I told you about, by the way they wrote (as this article discusses) that wasn’t my primary way. Discernment was. True discernment.

One reason why is because the better “puppetmasters” alter their writing styles, personality, times of posting, etc. trying to defeat that recognition.

The Church of Scientology sockpuppet brigades, back in the day, even would have different people, real people, all accessing and writing for ONE sockpuppet account, back in the early days of the internet. That was purely done for exactly that reason – trying to defeat recognition.

How’s that for some seriously sketchy (and chickenshit) behavior. Wow.

Speaking of seriously sketchy, this kind of sockpuppetry and propaganda techniques went right on over into the “alternative health” – so called – movement and helping to create any number of conspiracy deflections by supposedly educating people about vaccines (and covid).

Ok, now this is an article from 8 or so years after some of the articles about governments using sockpuppets.

Internet Trolls May be Trained Government Agents According to Leaked Document October 3rd 2019 by Brian Shilhavy

However, that article is using the documented information I already showed you, BUT, takes off from it in an interesting twist. Look at this heading in the article, just after inundating you with information that is actually accurate.

Trolls Used by Big Pharma to Attack Vaccine Objectors

Err. What?

Vaccines. Now there’s a has been seriously loaded with disinformation topic.

That article, under that heading, backs all the way up to 2012, when all the exposes about governments and others using sockpuppets to control discussion (which I will quote in a minute) TO SUPPORT THE PREMISE of that heading. I tracked down what was being used here (archived here) which is a comment by: By g724 (not verified) on 20 Apr 2012.

The immediate irony here is that this is BY an unverified identity which could be a pseudonym of one “normal” person, but it’s just as likely, in fact probably more likely, that g724 is a sockpuppet of an actual contracted government agent. One that is rather creatively doing their job by trying to enlist meat puppets – real people with pseudonyms – to themselves create multiple sockpuppets.

The 2019 article says about this commenter, that looks like just one guy with one big long bullet points comment, but the article makes it sound like it’s more than one “comment” –

Consider the following comments appearing on a blog post from a pro-Pharma site discussing how to target sites and Facebook Pages who publish the alternative view of vaccines. Advice is given on how to infiltrate and flood discussions about vaccines by pretending to be victims of diseases because they failed to get vaccinated. I am not going to mention the name of the website and give them publicity, but it has already been established that this site is financed by those with clear ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Here are some comments that appeared in a blog post that was trying to convince readers that outbreaks of diseases were due to “anti-vaccinationists”:

This part –

I am not going to mention the name of the website and give them publicity…

Preventing people from verifying FOR THEMSELVES?

Quotes the commenter I tracked down (or is he…) –

Use emotional warfare on anti-vax blogs. Tell emotional stories full of tears and sobbing and unbearable grief and terror, about people in your own family or people you read about, who were sick with or died of terrible diseases. Don’t hold back details about bodily fluids and suchlike: the more gross the better. This stuff has a way of infiltrating the minds of readers and subtly influencing their decisions, in a manner similar to advertising.’

‘Go in there and “agree with them” and then say things that appear thoroughly delusional, overtly nuts, blatantly and obviously wrong even to nincompoops, etc. Occasional spelling and grammar errors are also useful but don’t over-do. The point of this exercise is to create an impression that drives away undecideds who may come in to check out these sites. It helps to do this as a group effort and begin gradually, so the sites appear to be “going downhill slowly.”‘

‘But it is useful to have an email address that can’t be traced back, for certain legitimate and ethical uses, just as it is useful to have a mail box at say the UPS store.’

This is really fucked up. That last one is NOWHERE on the page of comments or from the person that did say the other things being quoted.

This article doesn’t really make it clear – which is shoddy reporting – and also leaves out some very key tactics that the first commenter being quoted said. The first two above are from within the same comment by the same commenter. The last one is from a totally different post page (but at the same site) that the first commenter actually was in. However, this one, this sockpuppet, is probably by the same person being supportive of the “other” commenters proposal aka two sockpuppets by one person, talking to each other. But  – Liz Ditz? Give me a break.

By Liz Ditz (not verified) on 25 Apr 2012 #permalink

What Antaeus Feldspar said about g724 proposal.

But it is useful to have an email address that can’t be traced back, for certain legitimate and ethical uses, just as it is useful to have a mail box at say the UPS store.

Cute.

Now let’s look at the full list of these proposals that Liz Ditz – I have trouble saying that with a straight face – is supporting, and see what we notice.

Full comment by g724–

The second one that the 2019 article quotes is from a completely different post on that same blog. This one (archived here). And guess what? It’s by the SAME commenter in the SAME discussion as Ms. Ditz.

By g724 (not verified) on 24 Apr 2012 #permalink

Poe2go @ 12 is right on target: post that kind of schizophrenic word-salad on the anti-vax sites in large quantities, under various pseudonyms, and clog up the sites with it until it appears that a large fraction of the members are downright wacko. This will seriously turn off undecideds who check out those sites. Poe2go’s comment is an excellent template for this tactic, but you can easily make up your own by inserting random words into sentences and then going on digressive riffs about the random words. Be sure to Capitalize occasional Nouns and Verbs as well.

Really: listen up folks, the way to fight this crap is NOT by “patiently explaining” to people who are already way past being persuaded that the Earth isn’t flat. You may as well be talking to rocks (healing crystals?:-). The way to fight it is by sabotaging the anti-vaxers with crazy stuff that drives away undecideds. The way to fight it is with emotional narratives that undermine the ones that the anti-vaxers are pushing.

In a different post from same commenter, same discussion –

Denise @ 26 and others: Yes, the hyperbole contest. So we should sneak into the anti-vax blogs and compare vaccines to the 9/11 attacks, complete with lots of weeping & wailing to make it “interesting.” And of course lots of embedded 9/11 CT, for example, “Just as Dick Cheney piloted those planes into the WTC by remote control, vaccine-pushers pilot their deadly shots into our children!” That kind of stuff also drives away undecideds.

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After that dogs breakfast from both the 2019 article and the sockpuppet-fest from 2012, I find them BOTH practically setting each other up FOR this kind of so-called “expose”.

It’s almost like…and maybe is, that the whole thing is a controlled opposition SHOW.

But the 2019 article goes one step further, adding –

As you can see from this advice, trying to reason or debate on the merits or lack of merits regarding vaccines does not work, so they have to resort to manipulative and deceptive tactics, much the same as what Greenwald was reporting about above in regards to government spy agencies.

No, it is not the same. But I see it’s meant to LOOK the same, both sides controlled. You do this, I say that, confuse everybody so they decide they can’t discern the truth at all.

Now that’s fucked up.

The question is, who benefits from this particularly staged “fight”.

…the propagandist naturally cannot reveal the true intentions of the principal for whom he acts — government, party chief, general, company director. Propaganda never can reveal its true projects and plans or divulge government secrets.

– Propaganda: the Formation of Men’s Attitudes by Jacques Ellul; French 1962, English 1965. You can read it here.

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Who benefits…

More

Historical precedents to today’s sockpuppetry

Perhaps it may help answer the question I posed, at least begin to, that as far back as 1964 the CIA was using sockpuppets.

Patriotic Betrayal: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Secret Campaign to Enroll American Students in the Crusade Against Communism by Karen Paget that Ed Coffman III (former Moonie, deceased) threw my way. In the book, Karen reveals that she and her husband had been made “witting” CIA agents within the National Student Association (NSA) – a CIA intelligence network front group.

p. 345, 346

Then in 1964 Random House published Wise and Ross’s Invisible Government, which explored the CIA’s role in Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, Indonesia, Laos, and Vietnam, and raised fundamental questions. Did the CIA influence U.S. foreign policy?

According to Wise, CIA officials considered buying up all the copies, but abandoned the idea when Random House chief Bennett Cerf pointed out that he could print a second edition. Instead, [CIA Director] McCone formed a “special group” inside the Agency to sabotage the book.

Its number 1 weapon: bad reviews written by CIA agents under code names and passed to cooperative journalists and publishers; among the fake reviewers was E. Howard Hunt, later of Watergate burglary fame.

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When the OSS, the predecessor to the CIA, was first forming up in 1942, Garland H. Williams had been sent over to London to be trained by the British SOE and he was given training materials to bring back to the U.S. to implement in the new OSS. One of which is available as a CIA declassified document in our Reading Library.

Here are some important excerpts from the document itself:

The more difficult task of securing accurate information as to minority political groups and subversive political organizations constitutes a very real challenge to the Director. He must develop contacts within such groups, or place loyal agents in such groups as members.

Such opposition forces should be assisted in every possible way in their aim to interfere with the functioning of the government in power.

Financial support should be offered and, if accepted, should be given in such a way that that future actions of the group can be controlled. This can best be accomplished by requiring that one of our agents be given a high position in the organization and that he exercise control over the finances. …

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That’s both the CIA, the OSS and British intelligence entering the chat on this topic of influence including money for sockpuppetry, back in the 1940s.

Even the exact same methodology is in play with the whole modern social media influencing.

Efforts should be made to foment social unrest in the hostile nation by agitating the current social problems and pitting one class against the other. A sub-Director who is thoroughly acquainted with the history of the hostile nation and its peoples should be assigned to study this problem and direct a planned campaign.

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By the time Eugenio Pacelli was head of the Vatican intelligence network under Pope Pius XI (and this is just prior to Pacelli becoming Pope in 1939) the “Kingdom of Satan” is now a spiritual order – of spiritual power – being ascribed onto Communism and not freemasonry now.

for the evil we must combat is at its origin primarily an evil of the spiritual order. From this polluted source the monstrous emanations of the communistic system flow with satanic logic.

– Pope Pius XI DIVINI REDEMPTORIS (On Atheistic Communism) 19 March 1937

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Another way of saying “spiritual” is mental – in the sense of you are talking about the unseen realm of Man. His thoughts, his heart, his mind, so to speak.

What this Pope is saying is that is what he wants the focus on. The MINDS of man. His DECISIONS. Which also happens to be the realm of (and the reason for) propaganda in the first place.

Jesuits (and the top Catholic leaders) are ALL about messing with people’s minds. That’s their real goal actually.

Note: In Canon 6577 – in 1538 – Pope Paul II Alessandro Farnese (Orsini) of Venice) created a third testamentary trust (fiducia) through a Papal Bull whereby the care of the souls of all people and the salvation of all “lost souls” – and we know what that means with these people – were entrusted to the newly formed Jesuit Order headed by Ignatius Loyola called Regimini Militantis Ecclesiae.

1540 –

The Jesuits.

Pope Paul III hands Ignatius the Regimini Militantis Ecclesiae on 27 September 1540. Anonymous. Chiesa del Gesu’ (Rome). Copyright Zeno Colantoni 2012.

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…[The Jesuit Society] it seeks to rival the Divinity in its knowledge of the human heart.

From the contemplation of this pious work, we will turn to the famous Constitutions of the Society. The Institute of the Jesuits is contained in fifteen distinct works; the book of the Constitutions being the groundwork of the system: strongly, deeply built; with a knowledge of mental architecture unsurpassed, except in the Spiritual Exercises of the same cunning Builder. Subsequent Rules, Decrees, Canons, &c., are stated to have ‘resulted from the spirit of the Institute, which they are intended to uphold and enforce. 

– The Novitiate written in 1846 by former ‘novice’ Jesuit Andrew Steinmetz

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The British –

“method or set of prescriptions that adds order and discipline to the pragmatic, natural activities of humans“.

– De memoriae virtute (the “art of memory”) by Alexander Dickson (1583) A large part of this subject closely paralleled (and were obviously the origin for) modern methods of manipulation as seen in advertising, psychological warfare, and politics.

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As for the knowing of men which is at second hand from reports:

• men’s weaknesses and faults are best known from their enemies,
• their virtues and abilities from their friends,
• their customs and times from their servants,
• their conceits and opinions from their familiar friends, with whom they discourse most.

– The Advancement of Learning originally published 1605, resurrected in 1893. By Francis Bacon, student of ‘Dr. Dee’ and author of the King James bible

The Jesuits later on –

the mastery of the art of directing men was to be his special pursuit as long as he remained in the new grade. To accomplish the latter, i. e., to become an expert psychologist and director of men’s consciences, he must observe and study constantly the actions, purposes, desires, faults, and virtues of the little group of Minervals who were placed under his personal direction and care. For his guidance in this difficult task a complicated mass of instructions was furnished him.

…The study of man was to be made at once so minute, so comprehensive, and so complete that two immense advantages would result: first, the acquisition of the art of influencing favorably the wills of one’s fellows, thus making social reformation possible; and second, self-knowledge.

– Discussing the (1776) ‘Illuminati’ materials of Catholic Jesuit Adam Weishaupt, as taken from Einige Originalschriften des Illuminaten Ordens, pp. 61-65. (internet archive copy here); as documented in New England and the Bavarian Illuminati by Vernon Stauffer; 1918; p. 155, 157. Available at the internet archive and Google Books. For more about the ‘Illuminati’ see my article.

400 years later from the Jesuits formation, more or less –

Pope Pius XII wished for “the intellectual penetration of the university milieu—the winning of the universities, professors and students, for the ideas that underlie peace and Christian world order.”

(Patriotic Betrayal p. 25, 26; John Courtney Murray, “Operation University,” America, issue 75 April 13, 1946, 28–29; You can read Operation University here, as taken from the main listing of the Works of John Courtney Murray at Georgetown University)

And thus we have the Vatican entering the chat on modern PERCEPTION CONTROL.

Patriotic Betrayal –

Taylor, sounding a bit like Joseph Lash during the Campobello training, argued that democracy could not survive “unless its leaders and elite groups . . . function . . . as combat cadres for the masses.” (Taylor, Awakening from History, 393–95)

Controlling ALL sides, all views, and ergo all outcomes – the FUTURE – is the preference.

p 249 Patriotic Betrayal.

The great irony in the NSA’s decision to choose Salvat over Ruiz is that both were on the CIA payroll. **The CIA believed in funding all factions in a political conflict…

How very Robert Gascoigne-Cecil of them. He called this DYARCHY. Cecil’s minions would promote a public policy in which they spoke loudly in support of the foreign policy ideas of the people (the Left) and a secret policy in which they actually acted, as always, straight on with the foreign policy of themselves (the Right)

That goes all the way back to the late 1800s. It has been brought right on forward, expanded, and brought into the internet age.

As to this – “The CIA believed in funding all factions in a political conflict” – Miles Copeland, CIA, in his book Without Cloak and Dagger noted that half the CIA was dominated by persons of Catholic and Jewish faiths.

That becomes rather relevant to understand in this more modern internet age, especially as to the Catholics (not to mention their weird love/hate relationship with Jews) for obvious reasons.

Acronym definition: SPD – Special Projects Division, CIA.

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Plain Text –

The SPD’s connections with international religious groups for purposes of aiding or supplementing espionage operations is almost as touchy an issue as its association with criminal rings.

To start with, Jewish and Catholic organizations are out. If it were learned that a case officer had lined up a Jewish or a Catholic organization for espionage purposes, half the agency would walk out. Contrary to some opinion, the CIA is definitely not a “WASP” organization; except for the units that deal with Middle East affairs, in which the Agency’s Jews prefer not to work, its percentages of Jews and Catholics are considerably higher than the national percentages.

Lastly, for now –

An example of certain British factions and certain Vatican factions combined obsession coming down through HUNDREDS OF YEARS showing itself yet again in modern times.

Individual Rights and the Federal Role in Behavior Modification; A Study Prepared by the Staff of the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Ninety-Third Congress, Second Session; published November 1974; 655 pages. – found at Black Vault’s MKULTRA archives. Also in the wayback machine of the internet archive and Mike’s personal internet archive.

page 644 –

We need to find the stimulus to which the subject responds. We also need to find out how he thinks covertly and to change how he thinks.

We need to dope up many of these men in order to calm them down to the point that they are accessible to treatment.

Those who can’t be controlled by drugs are candidates for the implantation of subcortical electrodes (electrodes plunged deep into the brain].

– Item VI.D.5 starting on page 632*, article titled: The Torture Cure:Winning criminal hearts and minds with drugs, scalpels and sensory deprivation by Jessica Mitford for Harpers Magazine, August 1973, pp. 16-30

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Noticing anything yet?

Sockpuppetry – just an updated version of what these people have been doing for centuries now.

Why?