Thursday 15 August 2013

DIRTY TROLLING AT FP: LETHARGY OF MODS OR TROLL ALLEGIANCE

The readers of FP this summer between the months of June and July were subjected to a generous but unpalatable treat comprising of what in the desi lingo is referred to as MC BC galiyan. The venue being the comment section. Almost everyone whose comments were not dressed up with modimantra was given generous helpings of these low level abuses.
A few samples of the treat for those who missed the party are served below:

Sample X:


Sample Y:














To get a firsthand experience you are free to visit the following links and read posts of the
Commentator Tera Baap (henceforth referred to as TB):
1)  Venue1
2)  Venue 2
3)  Venue 3
4)  Venue 4
(Statutory Warning: Almost every decent, civilized and sensitive individual has reported feeling a sense of wading through a verbal sewer. Therefore kindly proceed at your own risk.)

For a regular visitor/participant at FP who is not an ardent Namobhakht generous ‘prasad’ of bullying, personal attacks and abuses has become ritualistic. But what occurred this summer was an uncontrolled perverse troll fest which was beyond the consumption level of any civilized person.

It is to be noted that this unsavory summer bash was against the rules of FP comment policy but no attempt was made to spare the readers this forceful treat.
The mute question is why the concerned authorities did not take the necessary action against this rampant, repulsive and abusive trolling.

To be fair to the moderators in the past they have taken due cognizance of these kind of posts and have rightfully subjected them to the hammer. In some cases they have even blocked accounts.

In fact they have gone to the extent of shutting down the entire comment section well before the stipulated normal 48 hours time line as observed in the following screen shot:



Link: Comment section grounded unfairly

An objective analysis of the comment section leads one to conclude that it has been judged rather unfairly as there is hardly any abusive content relatively speaking.
This in itself makes one ponder that how come the ultra sensitive radar of FP moderators as on display in this article did not cause them to do the needful in case of this vulgar posts and why the moderators were allowing a free run to this troll named TB for so long. In fact some commentators had made direct appeals to the moderators against this filthy trolling

Appeal 1:



Appeal 2:




Link to the above screen Shot: Appeal Link

Although the appeals in these cases have gone unheeded, in the following instance the editor himself is addressing the personal query of a commentator:


However the abusive comments by this same commentator escape the moderator’s hammer.
It is an unfair world out there and FP is no exception. :(




Here is an example of a decent comment being snapped without a trace :




In the following screen shot the comment by @Firangi_paani  is not published:



It is to be noted that on the same forums where this abusive commentator TB is spewing his filth generously some comments have come under the knife and deleted. Interestingly several abusive comments which were a direct reply to the deleted ones have been spared. What can be the reasoning behind this selective moderation?


These observations leads one to conclude that at FP some participants are privileged and enjoy special status while ‘others’ have to toe the line with no guarantee of fair treatment.
This sadly is not the only infringement of the concerned authority entrusted with the moderation of the comment section. The following indulgence of FP moderators which may or may not be illegal but is certainly a misdemeanor on moral grounds as it leaves the readers who actively participate in debates and discussions prone to victimization if they have a different opinion than the moderators.

In the following instance the FP moderator is seen up-voting a proBJP comment.


Does this not give credibility to allegiance with troll theory?
When it is a case of one instance, benefit of doubt can be given citing reasons like technical snag or even a mistaken click of mouse button. But can this be justified in case of 19 instances as encountered in the following link? : 19 technical faults?


Like they say Once Is Chance, Twice is Coincidence, Third Time Is a Pattern.

The following instance shows a bias against their own staff member. . A solace for the readers however that they are not the only targets of FP moderators.:)

Glimpse of office politics of  FP :



Intriguingly FP mods are not merely satisfied with participating in voting but also are commenting laying bare their political bias.


The commnet of FP editors is deleted. :)

Saiyan bhaye kotwal to darr kahe ka is aptly applicable in this situation. No wonder the ‘worthy’ commentator TB was allowed a free ride as he was targeting everyone who was not a Namobhakt.

SUMMARY:

Even if the concerned authorities come up with some lame excuse for this and hide behind some technical reasoning, the fact that the moderators completely ignored the vulgar posts of TB and indulged in selective application of their moderation policy gives credibility to the theory expounded by many commentators time and again that FP is indeed a ModiPost.
In the words of Benjamin Franklin

“As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.”

The silence of the moderators with respect to TB is screaming the truth loud and clear about troll allegiance.

After all as Plato said:

“I shall assume that your silence gives consent.”

Or as Sherlock Holmes would have said :

“It is elementary my dear Watson the dog didn't bark at night!”


*********************************************************************************
END OF PART 1



Sunday 11 August 2013

THE STRUCTURE AND STRATEGY OF TROLL ARMY AT FP: Creating an Illusion Of Mass Support Base

The abusive troll fest which was in full swing during the summer came to an abrupt end bringing momentary respite for readers seeking meaningful discussion on current political happenings in the country.
A commentator named TrollFixer gate crashed into this sinful soiree with some insightful revelations of the troll army and driving away the abusive troll named TB.
An analysis of up voters, main commentators, their followers and their following list gives the impression of an organized Troll Army at work to create a false impression of massive support for Modi.

There are three levels of trolls assigned with a specific role.

(A) - Level 0 - si91 at the center. The Ring Leader. Comments as well as Up votes. Votes the most abusive  comments. Has voted most of the comments of TB.

 (B) - Level 1 – These are the main  interfaces.They comment regularly.Their comments reflect
extreme right winged ideology.They are highly aggressive, intolerant and abusive of any 
opposing opinion.

Examples: Mithram, aamabdul, Pagal Programmer, Jatayu,  Akash, Satyam,Comment Shark, tninety, Sanatan Dharma, Vinay Shekhar etc. They are invariably connected to si91 through following or as followers. They are also connected to level 2 Id’s through si91.  

 (C) - Level 2 – Most of these have no comment history. They however are seen Upvoting abusive and pro-Modi comments. It seems like these are just operational ID’s for the purpose of UP Voting and Down voting.

Here is a list of some of the Level 1 and 2 Id’s and their number of comments/following/followers data:

Sunny 0/0/0, Vicky 56/1/0, aniruddh c 3/0/0, bhavesh somani 3/0/0, vivek b 6/0/0, vikas 4/0/0, ashwin kumar 0/0/0, ravikant_s 0/0/0 akshay verma Nick 0/0/0 Vegeta 5/0/0Anuj T - 0/0/0
Sanjeev G - 2/0/0 NamoForPM - **85/2/1 Mitesh - 8/1/3 Ashwin Kumar - 0/0/0 RavikanS - 0/0/0
Hari Mehta - 1/0/0 D4mn 24/0/0 Raghu 1/0/0

To check connection to si91,  a few Id's were picked randomly:

Prithviraj 23/1/0, Follower si91;  Pragmatic Utopian 61/2/0, Follower si91 CommentShark184/2/0,Follower si91;
Akshay 5/0/1, Following si91
Nick 7/1/0, Follower si91; Tninety 579/1/0 Follower si91
Indian Desi 48/2/0 Follower si91; Finics 68/2/2, Follower si91
Akshay 5/0/1, Following si91; Indian_NaMo 3/1/0, Following si91
Cmewar 12/1/3 – Follower si91, Following Satyam Sharma, Akash Mukherjee, Vinay Shekhar
Vinay Shekhar 206/2/0 – Followers, si91, cmewar ; Ravi 3/1/0 – Follower si91
Akshay 5/0/1, Following si91; Ravi 3/1/0, Follower si91; NaMoForPM 85/2/1, Follower si91

 It is hard to miss the si91 connection, leading to the conclusion that he indeed is the ringleader of this group or the main operator of the group of Id’s.

Following screen shot shows the connection of highly active Level 1 Trolls to si91


MODUS OPERANDI OF THE TROLL  ARMY

The main aim of this troll army is to show massive support for Modi in the online community.
To achieve this they mainly indulge in the following tactics:
1) Up vote en masse
2) Down vote en masse
3) Post proModi comments en masse

Besides this they troll anyone who has a different point of view or specifically, is not pro Modi, with abuses and personal attacks. The aim is to discourage users who are not Modifanboys from commenting at FP, thus creating an impression of hundred percent support for their idol.
Also they try to raise issues tangentially in order to manipulate the discussion in a certain direction or obfuscate the issue at hand.And of course lies, half truths and propaganda reeks through most of their comments.
To confirm the same, one can always visit any article and analyze the comment section for up voting, down voting and nature of comments.
Almost without exceptions the pro-Modi comments are large in numbers. This need not necessarily mean that actual users are posting or participating in discussion. In all likelihood there are just a few users at any given time of the day who are operating different ids to vote as well as comment.

GHOST IDS
Previously when the up voters were not visible, a ghost army was at work to up vote proModi comments and down vote all anti Modi comments. Basically these are ids of the kind C4Q, W7DL272, CM782SN8S10. These have no comment history and no following and followers list. These can be best described as use and throw Id’s created for the sole purpose of  up voting and down voting or specifically for down voting as one needs a Disqus id for the same and cannot down vote as guest.

In this particular screenshot as one can observe the comment has been up voted 92 times using such ghost ids.




Forty three ghost id’s voting the following comment. In all probability these same Id’s have been used to down vote their perceived opponent’s comments as many as 100 times and more.


These ghost supporters can be seen in action here: Ghosts Who Vote

UPVOTE/DOWNVOTE SCORES : More Upvotes  Equal to electoral votes?

The trolls seem to be under the delusion that more up votes in the comment section will fetch more votes for their idol in the elections. The way they diligently up vote all their mates/id’s and similarly down vote their presumed opponent’s, one is forced to conclude that they have absolute faith in their own dogma.


“Ever wondered why you get so many negative ratings for your comments?”Retorts a level 1 operative in
 the above instance.


HIGH DOWN-VOTES = NO VISA TO COMMENT?

As per the troll rule book high Down Votes is a dis-qualifier for a commentator and it automatically makes him/her eligible for filthy abuses, bullying and is a NO ENTRY ticket to FP.
















Commentators @Firangi_paani and @manohar_T  have been consistently facing this kind of harassment.
They have been mocked and abused for their low UPvote score.The discussion points raised by them are however completely ignored.

Needless to say the following words of Samuel Butler will trickle like water through sieve in case of these fan boys.
“It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy - but he who has shown the better temper.”

MATCHING SEQUENCES: Many ids one user

In many cases there is an exact sequence of voters in more than one instance. This leads one to infer that possibly the ids were operated by a single person.



Another example of an exact matching sequence from a different article:





Following is some of the High UPvotes sampled randomly from  sample source . Not all of them are exact matches but same pool of ids are functioning and show a somewhat similar sequence.


In the above data UPVOTE3  and UPVOTE5 are an exact match. UPVOTE4 is also mirror image to these voting sequence except voters @Sanatan Dharma and @Brijesh Kumar got added as outside voters. 
Similarly in case of UPVOTE6 @Surya Hegde is an added ID that is used.

In the following data (sample source) there is no exact match but again the same set of ID’s are used and also one or two addition or deletion of ID’s gives an exact pattern. For Example UPV 8 and UPV 9 could be an exact match except for the added ID @Akash in UPV 9.

Several such matching sequences were found here: Matching Sequences

Two such matching sequences are as follows:

Matching Sequence 1
Swati
Maurya
Maurya Rajeev
Rajeev EternalPessimist
Abhinav Abhinav
Vikas Vikas
ChristopherK ChristopherK
Akshay Akshay
NaMoForPM NaMoForPM
BhaveshSomani BhaveshSomani
Karan Karan
AniruddhC AniruddhC
AshwinKumar AshwinKumar
AnujT AnujT
SD** SD**
SanjeevG SanjeevG
Ravi Ravi
Rakesh Ravish
Singh RakeshSingh
Mitesh Mitesh
Mithram Mithram
Sumi Sumi
Harish Harish
ravikant_s ravikant_s



Matching Sequence 2
Swati Swati
Rajeev Rajeev Swati
EternalPessimist EternalPessimist Rajeev
Abhinav Abhinav EternalPessimist
NaMoForPM NaMoForPM Abhinav
BhaveshSomani BhaveshSomani NaMoForPM
Karan Karan BhaveshSomani
AshwinKumar AshwinKumar Karan
AnujT AnujT AnujT
SD** SD** SD**
SanjeevG SanjeevG SanjeevG
Ravi Ravi Ravi
Ravish Ravish Ravish
RakeshSingh RakeshSingh RakeshSingh
RaghuRaj RaghuRaj RaghuRaj
Mitesh Mitesh Mitesh
Sumi Sumi Sumi
Harish Harish Harish
ravikant_s ravikant_s ravikant_s
RKGupta RKGupta RKGupta
1GuestVote 1GuestVote 1GuestVote

Note: The guest vote is always at the bottom, while in case of Id's, the first voter sits at the bottom of the sequence.
** SD refers to ID Sanatan Dharma in devnagri lipi.

This kind of pattern is mostly observed in AAP party related articles as the troll’s agenda on these forums is to mainly spam. Mostly one or two, at the most three trolls are active here copy pasting abuses of filthiest kind and standard propaganda material (branding AAP as naxalites, leftists, commies, anti capitalism, BJP vote cutter etc) and Down voting and Up voting.

The good Samaritan TrollFixer dealt a massive blow to the trolls. He not only demolished TB but also forced the trolls to change their strategy. For some time since then there was a heavy reduction in down voting of their perceived opponent’s comments. However up voting was active albeit with a different set of ID’s and as ‘Guest’ voters.

Abuses in the form of 'desi galiyans' trickled down but were replaced by religious fundamentalist comments with si91 in the lead.

There is also a consistently sly attempt to play the "ulta chor kotwal ko dante" trick against their perceived rivals specifically AAP supporters branding them as abusive and intolerant.
If you can't beat them malign them seems to be their strategy.

As the elections approach the troll army is bound to swell in numbers and so will their aggressive/abusive posts. With an inkling of these trolls getting support from within FP there is little hope for a meaningful and objective discussion to prevail on the forum.

Also the apprehension that the moderators will not hesitate to impose autocratic policies against genuine commentators is a lurking reality.

This amounts to total hijack of freedom of expression of the common citizens by the very fourth pillar entrusted with guarding it. When the concerned authorities within the system itself indulge in gagging and manipulative techniques, hope for revival of democratic values is doused in the most shocking manner.

The wide spreading apprehension that free and fair media is a myth has begun to appear like reality!

PART 1: DIRTY TROLLING AT FP: LETHARGY OF MODS OR TROLL ALLEGIANCE