Originally posted by Speckle
And maybe something a bit less convoluted, is a sock puppet the new term for troll?
The two terms are not interchangeable.
A troll is someone that post on the internet to stir up the people there. The troll is the actual person doing the trolling. If he creates one account
and that account reflects his real self, then it is not a sock puppet in any way shape or form.
A sock puppet is an account with an identity that is created by a person's sheer imagination that does not reflect his real life in any way shape or
form.
A troll can create sock puppets, but a sock puppet isn’t always used for trolling.
A sock puppet is a fake identity that someone creates so they can use it to argue with their main identity on the forum, or argue with others in place
of themselves, or use it to push their agenda the forum, only to be thrown away when he gets tired of it. A person can only have one main identity at
a time, all the others he creates on the same forum are “sock puppets” The main identity is referred to as “the troll” the alternate
identifies are referred to as “his sock puppets” A person may just create sock puppets on a forum, and never create a main identity that he will
stick with over the years.
It comes from the thing children will do when they put a sock on their hand and pretend to talk to it as a second person. Or use the sock puppet to
talk in the place of themselves.
They can use several sock puppets in one discussion to try to give the people they are interacting with on the forum the idea that they are the
majority opinion, and the person they are interacting with is the minority. They use it to leverage for force of “popular opinion” on a person
they disagree with.
They also use puppets to allow them to argue both sides of an opinion, so they can get people pulled into an ongoing discussion, even though there is
only one person that is truly in the discussion at that point. The main identity, and a couple of his sock puppets.
That is why I use the term “sock puppet” when a large group has people, or computers to create fake identities across the net and use those
identities to push a subject. No one identity actually reflects a real person. The identity is just something dreamed up to fill a place holder on
that forum, along with several other sock puppets that person maintains on that same forum to allow them to leverage popular opinion.
They do it to give the “appearance” of a general underlying popular opinion on the internet. Someone that hasn’t made up his mind will look
across several websites and see the same general opinion across all of them, so he thinks that that opinion is probably the most reasonable and will
adjust his opinion to match. Even though all the people across all those sites that he looked at are just sock puppets for the same person that is
pushing a specified agenda.
They don’t come out and say “We are a representative of X organization” They say “I am just a normal joe and I agree with what X organization
is doing”
If people see that X organization has an account on every website pushing their agenda, then they will just tune it out. But if they see what they
think is countless independent people all across the net saying they agree with X organization, then they pay more attention. It influences their
opinion a lot more because they want to fit in with “the majority”
One person can control hundreds of identities.
A few weeks back, I thought about posting a post talking about the chronic problem with sock puppets across the net that I have been seeing, but I
decided not to.
edit on 23-2-2013 by Mr Tranny because: (no reason given)
Not saying it isn't true in some respects but it seems strange that this exact copy pops up again. 
It may even be longer than a year ago. 
