[Arch0wl]

The Onion actually doesn't advertise itself as insincere. Rarely do they "break character," much less advertise in that format; when they have broken character (such as when they issued an apology for calling Quvenzhané Wallis a cunt) it's received negative reaction. On the surface, they do satirical things. It's the people who are in on the joke who tell you.

There is no similarity to victim-blaming logic. They're not even close to similar.

In victim blaming logic you blame someone who is on the receiving end of someone else's malicious actions simply because the person on the receiving end of those actions could have acted differently.

Here, pseudonyms aren't an entity or person. They're a kind of communication mask. The pseudonyms aren't on the receiving end of anything. Pseudonyms are an uncertain kind of communication mask, similar to sarcasm or satire, because you start deceptive from the get-go. It may be for privacy purposes, but it's still deception. You just don't regard it as such because you (and everyone else) has accepted this kind of activity as standard. The analogy to victim blaming doesn't work because the pseudonyms aren't acting one way or another; the people using the pseudonym are.

Originally Posted by Cavernio

That said, isn't the idea that when someone does this that they're hiding who they are such that you don't know it's a pseudonym?

Not really; if someone is using a pseudonym you've resigned any assurance that they're who they say they are. The only way for this to not be true is if they have some identifying features that point to a real person, such as if you know their real name. And the more you do that, the less you become a pseudonym, and the more a pseudonym is just a nickname.

This argument I've made isn't saying "it's all right to trick stupid people", by the way. This is saying that pseudonyms are this way, and people have a view of pseudonym-based reviews that doesn't align with what they actually are. It's saying that whether it's deception or not entirely depends on what you expect from the medium, because you don't regard sarcasm as a form of deception due to the commonly-understood nature of the rhetorical device.

Originally Posted by Hakulyte

Sockpuppeting is unethical because it dissociates yourself from your idea which is only solving a problem to create another one. You're no longer associated with your idea, but you're now hiding and losing credibility instantly if you're found out.

You missed the point about ad hominem reasoning: ideas should be disassociated from the person, not the other way around. To peg a person to an idea and treat the idea as having some legitimacy contingent on the person saying it is ad hominem reasoning, because idea-validity doesn't change depending on who says it.

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

This is not the best example IMO, because the Koch brothers frequently and demonstrably engage in deception and cause a lot of damage.

The damage it caused is irrelevant because I mentioned that to disprove the thesis of "if your growth is inorganic from the start then you will not receive organic growth on a large level"; the point is that organic growth can follow from inorganic growth, and that inorganic growth on a small scale can lead to organic growth on a large scale. It does not follow that if organic growth proceeds from inorganic growth then there will be damage -- this is just an example of how inorganic growth can be a temporary push for organic growth. If you recall, I also gave an example on reddit that aided this point.

The privacy argument doesn't really hold up. In that case, you're just using deception (a mask) for a different and more understandable goal. In the case of people who use sockpuppets to promote a book review, you could just as easily say they're using it for a reddit-style "knights of new" purpose: that is, by doing this they're padding it against being knocked down in the early stages by a disgruntled minority and giving the book a fair chance. You're appealing to motives here: they have a good motive, so it's not necessarily deceptive.

Say, for example, that someone needs to go to great lengths of deception to protect their privacy. It's not enough to use a single pseudonym, you need to have a whole network of them so that no one understands who you are. For some celebrities and public figures, this may be entirely necessary. In that case, you're creating the same level of deception but just for a different and, to you, more understandable purpose (privacy vs. self-promotion).

The utility argument you brought up seems to be consistent with what I said. It might be true that you could accomplish the same goal in a non-deceptive manner, but not necessarily in the same timeframe or with the same ease. Further, it could be true that if you publish a text and don't sockpuppet the book may have a 40-50% chance of success, but if you sockpuppet that boosts the text's chances to 75-90%. This is more consistent with the reddit example I gave you earlier. It might be possible to have the text take off anyway, but it'll take a lot longer. In evolution example, certainly Darwin's theory took off anyway -- but what if it had taken off even earlier?

That said, though, the utility arguments assumes sockpuppets are deceptive from the get-go. I don't think so, because I don't think they're any more or less deceptive than pseudonyms.

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

So when it comes to reviews, we go with what is the best available option. The alternative is to either pick one at random (which comes with its own expected utility), or choose based on available metrics for a best possible fit that I can muster. In this case, John Doe. Do I risk being wrong? Of course. But if I tend to be right more often than not, or more often than if I had simply chosen at random, then he is my best bet.

That doesn't mean that your selection makes this way non-deceptive, though. It only means that you've had luck so far in choosing John Doe. If I walk into a gay bar and I happen to find a straight person, that doesn't mean that it's a good idea to treat the people I encounter as straight. A bar that advertises itself as a gay bar means that you should treat people as gay first and anything else second. A pseudonym is the same thing but with false identity: you should treat it as insincere first and sincere only as an exception.

I didn't know the bit about firms being hired to bombard pages with false reviews. If some page has something like 200+ false reviews, that's a bit different than an author using pseudonyms to pad the beginning stages of their book reviews. But then, that's still something I'd expect given the nature of pseudonyms (disposable from the get-go).

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

It may very well be the case that it's empirically impossible to ensure sincere, honest reviews as long as pseudonyms exist. Even if this is the case, it's still unethical to sockpuppet in this context.

That just restates the proposition that it's unethical, but the impossibility of ensuring honest reviews comes from the nature of pseudonyms. If you're using your real name, anything dishonest you say is the exception. If you're using a pseudonym, anything honest you say is the exception. You should expect sincerity when talking to a real person -- if that's what you want from reviews, make them real name-only. Otherwise, you're just opting in to an inherently deceptive system, even if the system is meant to encourage things like privacy.