Is sockpuppeting unethical, and why?

[Arch0wl]

I've had this thought a lot lately.

Most of my morality stems around truth, but I don't think sockpuppeting is especially untruthful. Deception is when you tell someone that something is true when it is in fact false. With sockpuppeting you don't necessarily have to say false things (though you can), you're just appealing to psychological factors that may be irrelevant.

For example: suppose that a forum was filled with evolution denialists and you used a sockpuppet to convince them that evolution was true. You're not saying false things; in fact, the people who are reading your posts are being led to a view of reality that is true. The only thing you're manipulating is a factor that shouldn't fall into their consideration -- specifically, who says these things.

Believing that a view is true based on who says it is ad hominem reasoning though reversed. Ad hominem, as a fallacy, is literally treating a conclusion as false because of the characteristics of the person who is making that argument. So: "Arch is arguing that evolution is true, but Arch is a politician, so that can't be true." Alternatively, you can appeal to circumstances: "Arch is arguing that evolution is true, but Arch is in bed with Atheist groups, so of course he'd say that." Even as an appeal to expertise this does not make the claim true; people who claim appeal to authority is valid under the guise of expertise are only able to do so because it's a heuristic for truth, but it doesn't actually make a claim true. If I said "Arch is arguing that evolution is true, and Arch is an evolutionary biologist, so you should believe it", I have not actually proven that evolution is true or appealed to criteria that would make it true, rather I've just given you a reason to believe it probably is true. None of these factors affect the truth of evolution. The factors that would are things like lab research, the fossil record, the timeline of species emergence, and so on.

With this in mind, the view that, say, reviews hold this kind of credibility is ad hominem reasoning. You shouldn't be treating that review as credible because of who it comes from; you should be treating that review as credible because of what it says.

Several authors such as RJ Ellory and Stephen Leather have used sockpuppets to promote their own work. I believe RJ Ellory called his own work "magnificent."

I'm sorry, if you are a reviewer and call anything short of Hamlet "magnificent", I stop trusting your review. Not because of who you are, but because of how you've structured your review. I don't care who you are; I care about the things you're saying.

Now, most of the criticism of these people comes from the belief that reviews are an inherently credible medium, and that you're violating the trust of this medium by doing this.

Here's the problem: the belief that this was untrustworthy depends on the view that Amazon reviews are credible to begin with. If I go to 4chan, you can be reasonably certain that OP will probably respond as someone else, or that someone arguing against you/backing you up could easily be someone else. You assume no inherent honesty for this medium; you assume it's fiction.

This is why, for example, sarcasm and fiction writing aren't forms of lying. Sarcasm is saying something false that the reader knows is false. Fiction is as well. If you believe either is true, you're assumed to be on some level dense.

When an author posts a review of their own work, this is merely a hurdle to get over people who are using ad hominem reasoning to begin with. They shouldn't be. If a review of a book is legitimate -- that is, the claims in the book made are legitimate -- then the review is legitimate regardless of who posts it. More reviews, or less, don't change this.

Some people believe that it's still immoral because it's against the law or a ruleset. For example, David Vinjamuri has argued that since it's against Amazon's rules (and possibly the law), it's immoral:

Originally Posted by David Vinjamuri

Amazon’s review creation guidelines explicitly state that the following two types of reviews are not allowed on the site. ... In addition, writing malicious reviews or paying for phony reviews may violate civil or criminal laws in some jurisdictions.

But legality has nothing to do with morality, nor does a ruleset. The rules of FFR could say "don't ever say the word 'Pikachu'," but that wouldn't make everyone who has ever said the word 'Pikachu' immoral. Likewise, laws are created by legislators as a behavioral incentive. They do not define morality in the slightest. In fact, in the case of laws against gays or laws that cause widespread suffering, they can sometimes run counter to it -- the laws themselves can be immoral.

People, for some reason, seem to have less of a problem with getting friends or family to provide positive reviews of your book. Not only is this roughly the same thing, it's arguably worse, since friends and family can rarely write reviews on a level that an author could. The claims made are likely to be poorly-substantiated (unless you have quite a few educated friends) and the difference between a person who has 2 reviews and 20 reviews is the difference between people with a small social circle and people with a large, easily-manipulated following.

Sockpuppet reviews, then, are psychological condiments. They don't alter the legitimacy of anything -- the book, the author, or reviews. Vinjamuri from earlier insists that this is still immoral because it's deceptive; I hold that there was nothing to deceive to begin with, since this is like reading satire and getting outraged that it's not real. Reviews had no inherent legitimacy to begin with, they only have legitimacy by virtue of how they substantiate their claims. This is true regardless of who is doing it, even the author.

If you disagree with me (and I assume quite a few will, since giving pseudonyms an air of trust is the default position) then please state why, in clear terms.

Note: I distinguish sockpuppeting from impersonation. Sockpuppeting (using a pseudonym or an anonymous account) is fine. Impersonation (attempting to be a real person) is very different, since people are assumed to be who they say they are, and borders on identity theft. But if people can solicit gushing reviews from their friends or family, and this is allowed, the review system (even with real names) had no credibility to begin with.

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

Most of my morality stems around truth, but I don't think sockpuppeting is especially untruthful. Deception is when you tell someone that something is true when it is in fact false. With sockpuppeting you don't necessarily have to say false things (though you can), you're just appealing to psychological factors that may be irrelevant.

At the risk of being overly pedantic here:

Deception is not strictly limited to "telling someone that something is true when it is in fact false." What constitutes "deception" depends on context and can be quite broad. In general, it can be an *action* that leads one to believe something that isn't true -- not merely written or spoken word. It depends on what you're using the sockpuppet for in-context.

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

For example: suppose that a forum was filled with evolution denialists and you used a sockpuppet to convince them that evolution was true. You're not saying false things; in fact, the people who are reading your posts are being led to a view of reality that is true. The only thing you're manipulating is a factor that shouldn't fall into their consideration -- specifically, who says these things.

Believing that a view is true based on who says it is ad hominem reasoning though reversed. Ad hominem, as a fallacy, is literally treating a conclusion as false because of the characteristics of the person who is making that argument. So: "Arch is arguing that evolution is true, but Arch is a politician, so that can't be true." Alternatively, you can appeal to circumstances: "Arch is arguing that evolution is true, but Arch is in bed with Atheist groups, so of course he'd say that." Even as an appeal to expertise this does not make the claim true; people who claim appeal to authority is valid under the guise of expertise are only able to do so because it's a heuristic for truth, but it doesn't actually make a claim true. If I said "Arch is arguing that evolution is true, and Arch is an evolutionary biologist, so you should believe it", I have not actually proven that evolution is true or appealed to criteria that would make it true, rather I've just given you a reason to believe it probably is true. None of these factors affect the truth of evolution. The factors that would are things like lab research, the fossil record, the timeline of species emergence, and so on.

Using a sockpuppet to avoid ad hominem attacks is still deceptive, even if your intentions are sound (trying to get people to focus on the argument rather than the person).

The flipside is true as well. I've seen malicious Creationists pull shit all the time with sockpuppets. They create multiple accounts and make it look as through there are a bunch of passionate people engaging in a legitimate argument against science-minded folks when really it's one or two guys trying to control how things look from the outside to give a false impression to the uninitiated. IMO, that's both deceptive *and* harmful.

Of course, you could argue that it still doesn't matter because the *arguments* are what matter, but morality is more than mere truth value of underlying communication. You have to consider the resulting utility distribution (as this is what morality is addressing in the first place).

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

With this in mind, the view that, say, reviews hold this kind of credibility is ad hominem reasoning. You shouldn't be treating that review as credible because of who it comes from; you should be treating that review as credible because of what it says.

Well, the person who originates a review is still important. Personally, I pay attention to reviewers who I tend to agree with because it serves as a prediction metric going forward. If I find that I tend to agree with the reviews / assessments of movie reviewer John Doe, then if he tells me that the movie XYZ out in theaters sucks ass, then I'll probably believe him and not pay to see it.

So I might treat the review as credible because I treat John Doe as credible, and I treat John Doe as credible because I tend to agree with what John Doe's reviews say based on my own firsthand experiences that match up.

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

Several authors such as RJ Ellory and Stephen Leather have used sockpuppets to promote their own work. I believe RJ Ellory called his own work "magnificent."

I'm sorry, if you are a reviewer and call anything short of Hamlet "magnificent", I stop trusting your review. Not because of who you are, but because of how you've structured your review. I don't care who you are; I care about the things you're saying.

Now, most of the criticism of these people comes from the belief that reviews are an inherently credible medium, and that you're violating the trust of this medium by doing this.

Here's the problem: the belief that this was untrustworthy depends on the view that Amazon reviews are credible to begin with. If I go to 4chan, you can be reasonably certain that OP will probably respond as someone else, or that someone arguing against you/backing you up could easily be someone else. You assume no inherent honesty for this medium; you assume it's fiction.

Yes, we'd ideally want the reviews to be credible to begin with. Otherwise why have a review system? We look for reviews because we want credible accounts of what to expect when we make our decision to consume that product/service or not.

If an author is using a sockpuppet to say something good about his own work, he's being deceptive and should be using his real name. It doesn't matter if what he's saying is "arguably true" or even well-reasoned -- it's still deceptive and makes the review distribution not as credible.

When a customer looks at a review distribution, one of the metrics they pay attention to is not only the ratings distribution, but *how many* reviews there are, and how visible certain comments are. A thousand 4-star reviews says a lot more than three 4-star reviews, especially if they're all from different people. It means a lower variance / risk and that you are more likely to converge to the mean upon consumption/use. And if I see nothing but one person's opinion being sprayed out everywhere through a series of sockpuppets, it's much harder for me to see what the true expected value is since I can't get easy access to diversified opinion sources.

If you want to argue that it's not deceptive, then why is the author using the sockpuppet to begin with? You might respond with the argument you laid out in the second quote-block above about truth value being overlooked via ad hominem reasoning, but I'd counter with "It's no longer mere ad hominem in that context."

If an author is making a billion posts inflating his own work under his own name, outsiders would be right to start ignoring him. The customer already knows what the author thinks. The customer now wants to know what others think in order to get a more accurate assessment of the distribution. If the customer is instead being deceived into thinking that the "others" are others when it's actually "all one guy," then I'd say that's clearly dishonest in this context.

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

When an author posts a review of their own work, this is merely a hurdle to get over people who are using ad hominem reasoning to begin with. They shouldn't be. If a review of a book is legitimate -- that is, the claims in the book made are legitimate -- then the review is legitimate regardless of who posts it. More reviews, or less, don't change this.

Addressed earlier.

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

People, for some reason, seem to have less of a problem with getting friends or family to provide positive reviews of your book.

I think people would argue it's still problematic, but less so. Friends and family are still other people, and they may be less likely to agree to post reviews on behalf of an author if the author's work is legitimately bad. It's still a bias we don't want in our distribution because we don't have much in common with that segment and it isn't a representative sample (i.e. we'd ideally want reviews from people who are just like us -- outsiders who are partaking in the product/service and don't have any conflict of interest).

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

Sockpuppet reviews, then, are psychological condiments. They don't alter the legitimacy of anything -- the book, the author, or reviews. Reviews had no inherent legitimacy to begin with, they only have legitimacy by virtue of how they substantiate their claims. This is true regardless of who is doing it, even the author.

Reviews *should* have inherently legitimacy to begin with, and if they don't, then that's a *problem* that needs to be addressed and not treated as a trait we need to just accept and use as justification for more deception.

[Reincarnate]

Disclaimer: Actually there are clarifications I want to make on that post but I'll wait for a response to see if I need to make those points or not. I didn't proofread what I said at all and it's possible I misinterpreted an argument somewhere. Herp.

[Dynam0]

I don't see any justification for it really. If you need sockpuppets to begin with, it really suggests something about how the work would be reviewed by a larger sample size.

[Arch0wl]

Reviews lose their potential connection to a real person and presumption of sincerity the second you allow pseudonyms and anonymity to overtake the authorial role. It's inherent to the medium; by using a pseudonym you are by default engaging in a kind of identity masking. Going one step further and saying "how dare this fake name not be the fake name of the real person we wanted it to be" misunderstands how fundamentally frivolous pseudonyms are. If you want reviews to be real, they need to be by real people in a medium where you cannot disguise your identity so easily.

You called using a sockpuppet to avoid ad hominem attacks deceptive. But as I stated earlier, the medium is inherently deceptive. You can break out of it and try to be more truthful by, say, revealing your identity, but then you've broken the pseudonym. For example, on this forum I am not "Arch0wl" anymore. You all know my real name.

This part of what you wrote is interesting, and if possible, I'd like you to expand on it:

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

Of course, you could argue that it still doesn't matter because the *arguments* are what matter, but morality is more than mere truth value of underlying communication. You have to consider the resulting utility distribution (as this is what morality is addressing in the first place).

This isn't an argument against sockpuppets in absolute, only when used for undesirable purposes. Because if, say, I used sockpuppets to justify scientific literacy to a large number of people and wean them off creationism, this would be a higher "utility" (in the sense that this is valuable, for whatever arbitrary reason). Sure, you could argue that the utility distribution would be harmed because sockpuppeting is an inherently value-harming thing, but then that just begs the question of why it's a value-harming thing and assumes it's true from the get-go. You'd get back to the "why it's wrong" argument, and probably use something like "it's deceptive", but I don't think it's deceptive; believing a sockpuppet is akin to believing satire.

To extend this satire analogy: in your John Doe example, you're taking a risk by treating him as credible -- this is entirely dependent on your own circumstances. Someone could use your exact reasoning to say "personally, when I read things I assume them sincere, so I don't like The Onion."

Now, one of your arguments I consider interesting -- the use of star ratings in aggregate to make an estimate of how likely the reviews are to converge with your preferences. This, I believe, is distinct from using reviews under pseudonyms since to affect this in a substantial way (outside of the first few dozen reviews, which at most provide a base for the possibly sincere reviews to come) you'd have to create hundreds if not thousands of pseudonyms to affect a star rating. It's more akin to data manipulation than fudging a source.

But even then, consider online polls. These, especially when anyone can vote, are widely regarded as inherently untrustworthy. They vulnerable to bots and vote brigading, both forms of data manipulation in the sense that it creates a biased number. The data from these should be taken with a grain of salt, and often is.

The only aggregate that I look for, since I know online polls are bunk, is the critic aggregate: an aggregate of real people who have made real ratings in real publications. Think rottentomatoes.com, for example.

It wouldn't necessarily be ad hominem in the context of data fudging, but it would in the context of whether the claims made in a person's review are legitimate, which is the concern here. Very few authors (if any) are capable of fudging review data, so that's a different argument entirely, though if you want to have that argument I'd point to the way online polls are already regarded. You should take only aggregate metrics by confirmed, real, people.

I strongly disagree that "friends and family are still other people, and they may be less likely to agree to post reviews on behalf of an author if the author's work is legitimately bad." This may be true if these friends or family have a particular value system that necessitates this, but I've seen far too many examples of friends/family supporting pretty much whatever as a form of micro-nepotism.

I do agree that reviews should have some form of allowed sincerity to provide for metrics like you stated earlier. But that's impossible with pseudonym reviews; sincerity is the promise that you are who you say you are and that you believe what you say you believe, and you opted-out of sincerity the moment you decided to pretend to have a different name. At that point, every review should be read with Poe's law in mind, except instead of "is this real or satire" it's "is this real or fake."

[Arch0wl]

Dynam0:

Originally Posted by Dynam0

I don't see any justification for it really. If you need sockpuppets to begin with, it really suggests something about how the work would be reviewed by a larger sample size.

This is a common view, but wrong.

On reddit and on a subreddit where the front paged links have upvote totals in the high hundreds if not mid-thirteen hundreds, your chances of reaching the front page rise exponentially once you're at around 20-30 upvotes. I've both done this and tested this.

For example: I had a link that, for the life of me, could not survive the tadpole phase. It would frequently die at 0-5 upvotes, and the same users would camp that link every time, downvoting it if I resubmitted it.

So I used several different IPs and new accounts to bring the post up to +20. Bingo: it had the "padding" it needed to survive the initial criticism, and it shot its way up to +1000.

The initial bump/snowball roll was inorganic and contrived. But the reaction after that was organic, and so I didn't need to do anything.

There are other examples of this in less frivolous media; in fact, there are examples of this in real life. The Koch brothers did this with the Tea Party -- initially, it was corporately-funded and lots of people would show up who had no sincere interest. But after that, tens of thousands of people who were legitimately interested in the ideas showed up to the protests.

As this video on the development of movements demonstrates, a person without a follower is a "lone crazy." The first couple of followers matter A LOT. After that, people tend to do the work for you.

This applies to anything -- dancing, books, whatever.

Sure, if you're legitimately bad, you may not get this kind of organic following. But there's a lot of luck involved in this, and the luck factor minimizes when you have that initial "padding" factor. This is what a lot of these authors are doing with their reviews: giving them a bump and hope the book grows organically. They obviously do not intend to write every review (or at least I hope not).

Once you understand this, and especially how arbitrary and luck-based the idea of organic growth on the web is to begin with, you will start to believe in the idea of organic and authentic content less: there usually is none. Ironically, some of the most authentic content I've seen is posted by standups using their real name in /r/standup shots, but if you did that with any other kind of content (blogs), you'd get reamed for self-promotion or advertising or whatever. The myth of 3rd party independent explosions is, essentially, a myth for all but the most obviously viral content, and even then many times it's "not always."

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

Reviews lose their potential connection to a real person and presumption of sincerity the second you allow pseudonyms and anonymity to overtake the authorial role. It's inherent to the medium; by using a pseudonym you are by default engaging in a kind of identity masking.

Using a pseudonym online is more for security/privacy purposes. Sometimes we wish to review a product without having it tied to us personally. For instance, maybe Mr. Smith really wants the world to know that Awesome Brand Condoms is the shit, but he doesn't want everyone to know that detail about his private life. Not everyone is comfortable with the public knowing every detail about their personal preferences and simply wish to inform others what they can expect if they try the product themselves.

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

You called using a sockpuppet to avoid ad hominem attacks deceptive. But as I stated earlier, the medium is inherently deceptive. You can break out of it and try to be more truthful by, say, revealing your identity, but then you've broken the pseudonym. For example, on this forum I am not "Arch0wl" anymore. You all know my real name.

I'd argue that the medium is not inherently deceptive -- it's just a medium that can be (and unfortunately is) easily abused in deceptive ways (unless this is how you define "inherently" here). It's not "inherently" anything IMO. We'd *prefer* the medium to be legitimate. And if it's not, we have to ask ourselves what can be done to address the problems at hand, if anything.

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

This part of what you wrote is interesting, and if possible, I'd like you to expand on it

Expanding on that point to an adequate/sufficient level of detail would require an entire book lmfao. There's so much to say on the subject of morality and utility, it's genuinely interesting stuff -- but it requires a lot of framework up-front to really understand it all IMO. I will get into that point in another thread if you're genuinely interested.

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

This isn't an argument against sockpuppets in absolute, only when used for undesirable purposes. Because if, say, I used sockpuppets to justify scientific literacy to a large number of people and wean them off creationism, this would be a higher "utility" (in the sense that this is valuable, for whatever arbitrary reason). Sure, you could argue that the utility distribution would be harmed because sockpuppeting is an inherently value-harming thing, but then that just begs the question of why it's a value-harming thing and assumes it's true from the get-go. You'd get back to the "why it's wrong" argument, and probably use something like "it's deceptive", but I don't think it's deceptive; believing a sockpuppet is akin to believing satire.

Here we're getting into the utility argument of trade-offs ("is it worth killing thousands to save billions?"). In this case, is it worth deceiving people in order to bring about something we see as far superior and healthy (scientific literacy / critical thinking and all the benefits that come with it)?

To that I say "there's no objectively right or wrong answer" as sometimes typically-unethical actions lead to good outcomes, but the problem is that people extrapolate it to contexts where it isn't applicable. Empirically, most people use unethical actions to lead to very selfish and destructive outcomes (especially for others). We also have to ask, "Do I need to deceive to accomplish my intended goal?" Do you really need to use sockpuppets to accomplish the goal of spreading scientific literacy, etc? If not, then maybe there is an ethical way to reduce internal dissonance / guilt / whatever and accomplish the same goal -- and even accomplish something better than you would have done otherwise.

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

To extend this satire analogy: in your John Doe example, you're taking a risk by treating him as credible -- this is entirely dependent on your own circumstances. Someone could use your exact reasoning to say "personally, when I read things I assume them sincere, so I don't like The Onion."

Yes, there is a risk in treating John Doe as credible. We take risks all the time. We take risks in our beliefs. We strongly believe that when we walk outside, we still not suddenly float up towards the atmosphere because gravity decided to sleep in one day. We have no reason to assume otherwise, so we hold that assumption pretty much at 100% certainty. We have varying degrees of truth assumption in various things.

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.

This is basically just the basic concept of decision trees and probability assessment blahblahblahblah.

I don't understand your point about the Onion. I read the Onion because I think it's funny and don't expect it to be sincere, because that's not its goal. If I read a review that is being offered from within a framework that is passing itself off as sincere and legitimate, then I expect the review to be sincere. If it's not, then the framework loses credibility. Case in point: Fox News.

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

Now, one of your arguments I consider interesting -- the use of star ratings in aggregate to make an estimate of how likely the reviews are to converge with your preferences. This, I believe, is distinct from using reviews under pseudonyms since to affect this in a substantial way (outside of the first few dozen reviews, which at most provide a base for the possibly sincere reviews to come) you'd have to create hundreds if not thousands of pseudonyms to affect a star rating. It's more akin to data manipulation than fudging a source.

I was thinking of Amazon and Yelp when I was writing that paragraph, but if you check out recent news, it's been estimated that a *significant* fraction of those reviews are from shills. In other words, people do create hundreds if not thousands of psuedonyms to affect ratings. And why wouldn't they? If it results in a massive difference in revenue, then it's worth hiring people to do nothing *but* make pseudonyms and fuck with ratings.

But usually it's an issue of visibility. People usually only read the first few pages / sections of reviews, and so if someone can manipulate their way into gaining that visibility, they'll attempt to do so, oftentimes through sheer numbers.

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

But even then, consider online polls. These, especially when anyone can vote, are widely regarded as inherently untrustworthy. They vulnerable to bots and vote brigading, both forms of data manipulation in the sense that it creates a biased number. The data from these should be taken with a grain of salt, and often is.

Sure -- it's a problem. But to me, that just means it's a problem we either have to address, or if we can't, then we can't trust those review systems.

You might be making the same argument about, say, Amazon -- that it's too open to abuse and therefore we shouldn't expect it to be legit any more than we'd expect a bot-vulnerable poll to be legit. But then we have to see if this is a problem we can address or if there is a better alternative.

Regardless, it doesn't change the fact that sockpuppeting is unethical in this context. It's not much different than saying "well the medium's already fucked and a bunch of other people are doing unethical things that undermine the credibility of it all, so it's okay if I do it too."

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

I strongly disagree that "friends and family are still other people, and they may be less likely to agree to post reviews on behalf of an author if the author's work is legitimately bad." This may be true if these friends or family have a particular value system that necessitates this, but I've seen far too many examples of friends/family supporting pretty much whatever as a form of micro-nepotism.

I mean I technically agree with you on this point and was trying to address why it may not "be as bad" -- but I agree that empirically, the whole dragging-in-of-family-and-friends idea tends to result in data points we'd be better off excluding.

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

I do agree that reviews should have some form of allowed sincerity to provide for metrics like you stated earlier. But that's impossible with pseudonym reviews; sincerity is the promise that you are who you say you are and that you believe what you say you believe, and you opted-out of sincerity the moment you decided to pretend to have a different name. At that point, every review should be read with Poe's law in mind, except instead of "is this real or satire" it's "is this real or fake."

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.

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

There are other examples of this in less frivolous media; in fact, there are examples of this in real life. The Koch brothers did this with the Tea Party -- initially, it was corporately-funded and lots of people would show up who had no sincere interest. But after that, tens of thousands of people who were legitimately interested in the ideas showed up to the protests.

This is not the best example IMO, because the Koch brothers frequently and demonstrably engage in deception and cause a lot of damage. The Tea Party was passed off as a "grassroots" campaign to make it sound like "this is what the people want!" when really it was heavily funded by powerful, dishonest people with a stake in the matter.

The "organic growth" that has followed it has also largely been founded on ignorance and racism which has been fostered through various media outlets and national dialogues and so forth. A lot of money has been pumped into keeping people ignorant, afraid, and narcissistic. Even the "organic growth" is not as organic as you may think here.

Originally Posted by Untimely Friction

K I wanna read this but what is "Sockpuppeting"

Basically one person posting under multiple accounts, or someone trying to post under a "puppet" account that is intended to be seen as independent of the "puppeteer."

[Arch0wl]

Will reply later tonight, but I want to touch on a few things before I do:

You said "I read the Onion because I think it's funny and don't expect it to be sincere, because that's not its goal." That's my point. The Onion isn't deceptive because you have a mutual understanding that the medium (satire) isn't sincere. But for the Onion to be funny, it has to be deceptive in some way, e.g. someone who is much dumber than you could sincerely believe it.

This is because satire, as a medium, carries no expectation of sincerity. Fiction, also, carries no expectation of sincerity. Both of these forms of communications are understood to be devoid of claims about reality. By enabling reviews with pseudonyms, you're opting-in to this insincerity; this isn't "well, everyone does it so it's okay" -- this is "it was screwed before anyone did anything, and you can only make it better by using a different medium entirely (real names)."

And if you have an understanding that a medium is bullshit, then there isn't anything deceptive about you using it that way; there isn't anything deceptive about someone speaking in sarcasm because we have an understanding that sarcasm is saying things you don't mean intentionally. The problem here isn't that people do this, it's that people still expect pseudonyms to carry legitimate weight on par with or even approximating real reviewers.

[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. I have no idea how you can suggest that deception can do enough good to compensate the harm it does. I know there's historical events where by example a woman used a man's pen name to get their work a look at and win prizes etc. but the real problem here wasn't the woman, but the rules back in the day. You shouldn't have to rely on sockpuppeting to get somewhere nowadays. The only logical place where sockpuppeting should work somehow is Internet because everyone at this point in time is considered mostly anonymous unless you voluntary give information. So, yes unethical in real life but still "sort of" ethical and open to debate on Internet. Even in that case, it's still slowly turning less and less popular as an idea as we see social websites getting more and more part of daily life.

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

Will reply later tonight, but I want to touch on a few things before I do:

You said "I read the Onion because I think it's funny and don't expect it to be sincere, because that's not its goal." That's my point. The Onion isn't deceptive because you have a mutual understanding that the medium (satire) isn't sincere. But for the Onion to be funny, it has to be deceptive in some way, e.g. someone who is much dumber than you could sincerely believe it.

This is because satire, as a medium, carries no expectation of sincerity. Fiction, also, carries no expectation of sincerity. Both of these forms of communications are understood to be devoid of claims about reality. By enabling reviews with pseudonyms, you're opting-in to this insincerity; this isn't "well, everyone does it so it's okay" -- this is "it was screwed before anyone did anything, and you can only make it better by using a different medium entirely (real names)."

And if you have an understanding that a medium is bullshit, then there isn't anything deceptive about you using it that way; there isn't anything deceptive about someone speaking in sarcasm because we have an understanding that sarcasm is saying things you don't mean intentionally. The problem here isn't that people do this, it's that people still expect pseudonyms to carry legitimate weight on par with or even approximating real reviewers.

Why not blame the dicks who abuse the medium rather than blaming the medium because dicks use it to be dicks? I don't think it makes sense to justify sockpuppeting as not-unethical simply because the medium is botched, when the medium is only botched precisely because of people who, for instance, sockpuppet. You aren't holding the trespassers responsible for their own actions.

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

The problem here isn't that people do this, it's that people still expect pseudonyms to carry legitimate weight on par with or even approximating real reviewers.

Using real names has its own set of problems, too.

Regardless, none of this, IMO, justifies sockpuppeting as somehow not-unethical. It's veering dangerously close to victim-blaming logic:

"If you didn't want me to act like a dick, you shouldn't have let me use a pseudonym"

"If that guy didn't want to get shot, he shouldn't have startled me by walking on that sidewalk"

"If that woman didn't want to get raped, she shouldn't have been flirting with me"

"If my son didn't want to get beaten within an inch of his life, he shouldn't have made me that mad"

[Cavernio]

Never thought about this before at all, never heard of the term sockpuppeting before either, although it was pretty easy to figure out what's been talked about. 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? Which of course makes this...
"The problem here isn't that people do this, it's that people still expect pseudonyms to carry legitimate weight on par with or even approximating real reviewers." moot.

"this isn't "well, everyone does it so it's okay" -- this is "it was screwed before anyone did anything, and you can only make it better by using a different medium entirely (real names)." "
Um, how was it screwed before anyone did anything?

Regardless of all that, it's quite simple as to whether to call this deception or not. The person who decides to toot their own horn using a pseudonym has themselves opted to do so. Condom example not withstanding, the reason that people do such a thing IS to deceive people. If pretending to not be yourself doesn't actually matter for the message, then there'd be absolutely no reason change your name. It's easy to say that medium is bs, that someone's falling into logical fallacies when they decide one person's opinion is better than another's, etc., but to pretend that those things don't happen is to purposefully blind yourself to the reality of how people work. To argue 'well, only stupid people fall for that' is simply saying it's alright to trick stupid people.

Of course if you don't believe deception is wrong in general, then this is all fair game.

[Cavernio]

The argument 'everyone else is doing is so therefore I need to do it in order to be on par with everyone else' probably would, IMO, outweigh that immorality that deception was used in the first place. Still, if it's just about being on par with everyone else, then if no one deceived anyone about how popular or good something is, then we'd also all be on a level playing field, and I find it incredibly depressing that in order for art/whatever to be noticed one must play the popularity game.

[Reincarnate]

Trying to summarize Arch's argument here (using "the Site" as the stand-in example for any other review-site like Amazon, Yelp, etc):

"I claim sockpuppeting is not unethical.

If the Site truly wanted legitimacy in their reviews, they should have opted for people to use their real names instead of pseudonyms.

Since they didn't, the expectation of legitimacy/sincerity/credibility is implicitly waived.

It's much like the Onion, a satirical website, where the expectation of legitimacy/sincerity/credibility is also waived (as is the nature of the satirical medium by definition).

So when it comes to sites where legitimacy is waived, we consider it not unethical for an author to write an Onion article (and possibly dupe a dumb person), and so it should also be not unethical to make sockpuppet reviews on Amazon (and possibly dupe a customer)."

Before I continue, would you agree that this is an accurate portrayal of your stance? (I'm trying to establish the logical linkages between all your claims in a simple way first -- feel free to add or modify or subtract)

[Arch0wl]

still not able to reply in depth yet, but yes that's an accurate paraphrase

[Reincarnate]

I'm actually too tired to write a fully fleshed-out rebuttal but I guess I'd just make these points:

1. The Onion advertises itself as insincere -- it's meant to be satirical. Therefore we go in with the expectation that it's "fake." This is different from a Site that advertises itself as legitimate, tries to enforce legitimacy, and is overrun with fake sockpuppets that try to mess with the integrity of the review system. A site that is intentionally misleading (and goes out of its way to advertise itself as such) is not the same as a site that is misleading against its will due to external trespassers.

2. Why is the use of one's real name required? Yes, you might get reviews that are more accurate/honest if people are using their real names, but that doesn't mean it's somehow ethical (or at least not unethical) to mess around with pseudonyms and screw the system. There are good reasons to not use one's real name on a review site (security and privacy mainly).

As I mentioned earlier, this is similar to victim-blaming logic. "If the Site wanted to remain a credible site, it should have been harder for me to undermine its credibility."

I would hope that you would agree that it's not ethical for someone to rape a woman simply because she's attractive and physically weak. Otherwise it's like saying "if she didn't want to get raped, she shouldn't have made it so easy for a guy to take advantage of her. By putting herself in that situation, she waived the right to be outraged because there was no expectation that she'd be left alone in the first place."

That analogy isn't perfect but IMO it's close enough. Do you think it would be not unethical in that situation? If you think it's unethical, then what is the logical underpinning that differentiates it from the sockpuppet argument?

[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.

[Dynam0]

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

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.

Is sockpuppeting even possible without the use of pseudonyms? That granted alone should be enough to convince someone that sockpuppeting takes the deceptive nature of a pseudonym a step further, regardless of if you think using a nickname is deceptive or not.

Looking at this from a perspective from someone within the scientific community, the fact that a deceptive act such as sockpuppeting achieves organic growth of an idea faster and with a higher success rate, although true, should not outweigh the benefits and significance of achieving this growth using honest means, no matter the urgency of instilling that idea. If the human race is too illogical or immoral to recognize a genuine idea without an inorganic jump-start to "get the ball rolling", then it is up to the publisher and actual supporters to try and change the public's image of that idea. To go about this using sockpuppets is, to me, unethical and possibly dangerous.

[Reincarnate]

Arch:

You can argue that the pseudonym is deceptive, but it's only "deceptive" with respect to real identity, which isn't required in order to get a fair review distribution. It's like saying that I'm deceptive because I wear clothes to cover up and "hide" my naked self. It's not deception here -- it's privacy.

It may be impossible to ensure honest reviews with pseudonyms (you can't even fully guarantee it even with real names -- people still lie), but that doesn't suddenly make it not unethical to sockpuppet.

"If you're using a pseudonym, anything honest you say is the exception." -- I would say that you have not shown this to be the case. You're using it as a premise without showing why it needs to be assumed.

The argument is basically "If you use a pseudonym, then the entire system is fundamentally deceptive and insincere like the Onion, so now it's okay if I sockpuppet."

You're trying to justify one kind of deception with another. "I can sockpuppet and deceive by meddling with the distribution because I think it's deceptive for people to use pseudonyms." Even so, how does this make sockpuppetting not unethical? Do you think it's not unethical to use pseudonyms? Do you think deception is unethical?

EDIT: Also the bootstrapping argument (the organic growth thing) is a sort of "the ends justify the means" argument. It also ignores a lot of possible concerns with the nature of the growth. Just because something takes off doesn't mean it's "real" growth -- it can also be a shock resulting in a false equilibrium that self-destructs once it's found to have no real underpinning to support it (think economic bubbles).

It's also possible that it never takes off, and all that you've accomplished in the short-term is duping a bunch of people into buying into something based on a false impression/distribution upon which their decisions were made.

In other words, the distribution formed by the bootstrapping may be completely different from what the real distribution would actually be.

[Izzy]

Didn't read the entirety of the thread, but it seems like it should be up to the individual to be skeptical of how they come to believe what they believe. It seems like more of your own fault then the person trying to make you believe something.

In the case of children though I think it is disgustingly unethical. Especially in the case of religious beliefs.

Which would mostly commonly be referring to parents making their children believe a certain thing. The kids are going to believe their parents because you are hardwired as a small child to trust your parents and learn from them.

I think there should be some ethical responsibility to not mislead your children, but unfortunately there are no laws against teaching your children to believe whatever you want.