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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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:
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
** 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.
Matching Sequence 1
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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. |
||
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.
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
PART 1: DIRTY TROLLING AT FP: LETHARGY OF MODS OR TROLL ALLEGIANCE
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