Paper:
An Army of Me: sock puppets in Online Discussion Communities Srijan Kumar, Justin Cheng, Jure Leskovec, V.S. Subrahmanian.
Summary:
The paper deals with the analysis of “a user account that is controlled by an individual (or puppet master) who controls at least one other user account.” The authors analyze various aspects of Sock puppets and their behavior over nine online discussion communities. The study was conducted using the study of a dataset of 62,744,175 posts and studying the users along with discussions within them. They discuss how sock puppets may often be found in pairs, assuming the role of primary and secondary or supporter and dissenter.
Reflection:
- The authors broadly define a sock puppet as a user account that is controlled by an individual (or puppet master) who controls at least one other user account. However, I prefer the traditional definition of the word: “a false online identity that is used for the purposes of deceiving others.”
- Furthermore, it would be wise to highlight that the sock puppets are often paid partnerships with companies to push their product, but more often than not, they are also a part of Affiliate Marketing where they sell products and earn commissions.
Not only that, these “stealth influencers” could also potentially sway public opinion on a political issue/candidate.
- Another interesting point about pair sock puppets, that I pondered upon, was the dissenting Good Cop-Bad Cop roles that they might play. Wherein one disagrees or puts down a product/feature, which is when the primary sock puppet could swoop in and make the same product shine, by highlighting its pros (which were intentionally questioned by the secondary sock puppet). This is a dynamic between pair sock puppets that I would want to investigate.
- Another additional metric, worth investigating is the language/ linguistic cues used by the sock puppets to market products. Average Marketing Campaigns, keep the use of jargons to a bare minimum for the lay consumer (eg: 10x faster, 2.5x lighter) sock puppets though, using impartial terms to seem unbiased and neutral, could also be using more jargons to seem like a domain expert and intimidate a user into thinking that they really know the technicalities of the product.
- Furthermore, I know how difficult it is to obtain clean and complete datasets, but the Disqus dataset barely consists of data with reference to products and purchases. Certain metrics used in the paper and a few other ones, if used with an Amazon Reviews or Ebay Comments Dataset, would yield a great amount of knowledge about the sock puppets and their behavior
- Another great point to be considered about sock puppets living a dual life is their activity in their ordinary and fake account. A genuine user would have a legitimate profile history and personal data such as friend lists, other interests apart from the one topic being discussed in the post comments.
- Another question worth asking is about false positives or false negatives as to, how would one verify the results of such a system?
