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September 4, 2022
On Comment Moderation

In April this year a new commentator appeared on this blog under the name of 'ostro'. Some of his comments were reasonable, some were  boring one-liners. There were many of them. Overall he did not bother me or others and time will always sift out commentators who do not fit into the Moon of Alabama community.

At the end of July I noticed by chance that 'ostro' was not as harmless as he seemed. He had started to post under two names, 'ostro' and 'ppp'. The comments did not relate to each other but came just minutes apart from the very same Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. That does not happen by chance. Again – the comments in themselves were not that unreasonable though at times a bit too aggressive.

Here it how that looked on the comment management screen of the software this blog is running on:


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A complication in finding out what was happening was the fact that 'ostro' was using a proxy network. The IP-addresses where his comments were coming from were not his but from a larger proxy network provider which rents servers all over the world to disguise the locations of its users. Nothing new, nothing nefarious in itself, just something that requires a bit more work to police the comments here.

A person who uses several usernames to post comments here is a sockpuppeteer. He plays one character and another and another – all at the same time and often in concert to push the general tone of the comment section into a specific direction. This confuses other commentators. It disrupts threads. It is the opposite of being honest.

In consequence I banned 'ostro' and 'ppp', i.e. I blocked the IP addresses his comments were coming through. I did and do so with any sockpuppeteer who tries to comment on this blog under multiple names. The general Internet rule for this is simple. Choose one not yet used username and stick to it. Otherwise you will be banned.

After 'ostro' finally recognized that he was blocked from the comments he attempted to take revenge by really messing with this blog. Around August 7 he started to comment under a myriad of different usernames. The most prolific monikers 'ostro' used were 'Gilbert' 'Maxx' 'rp' 'Steve' etc. All were coming through the same large proxy network, i.e. from the same pool of IP addresses. Here is an example from one IP address.


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Most of the comments under those thirty plus names were not even unreasonable. That is why it again took me some time to notice that something was wrong. At the end of August I finally started to systematically search for and block comments which had different name tags but came through the very same group of IP addresses. As 'ostro' is using a large proxy network with multiple IP addresses it took hours to block most of them. There were dozens and I am pretty sure there are still some I haven't yet caught.

In response 'ostro' did something that was even more nefarious. He started to comment under the name of well known commentators here to attack other commentators. Some of the names and persons he abused in such ways were 'Peter AU1', 'pretzelattack' and 'Helmuth von Moltke'.

The faked comments were not harmless but designed to disrupt the community by making it look as if some prominent members of this community were out to attack other prominent members.

I have since cleaned up that mess as good as I could by deleting the faked comments. The 'ostro' addresses where those were coming through were of course also blocked.

Those commentators who were affected by this should calm down. Your anger towards this or that other community member is unfounded as their names were probably or even likely abused to attack you.

This all could be prevented if I would demand that commentators somehow verify themselves and use some login process to comment here. The software this blog is running on allows for that. The Saker blog has recently switched to such a process after its comments section was overrun by shitposters.

I'll try to avoid that. I like that this blog does not require user verification. It is important to me to leave the comment section as untouched as possible. Sure, I will continue to block haters and abusive language or other misbehavior whenever I see it. But it is not my task to police well formulated opinions.

'Ostro' is a person (or a group?) who seems to have a lot of time at his hand. He will continue to bother this blog and I will continue to fight against that. I have run Moon of Alabama for some eighteen years now and there have been dozens of abusers, some extremely tenacious, who have tried to disrupt it. So far I have beaten them all.

Other commentators, especially the longtime regulars, should be aware that this or that 'attack' on them may not be real. It is better to hold back than to start bar fights over stuff that was probably intentionally posted to incite you.

It is impossible for me to read and check every comment and to immediately react to abuses. If you see a problem with some comments or commentators please notify me by email. I will then handle the issue.

Thanks!

b.

Posted by b on September 4, 2022 at 10:25 UTC | Permalink
Comments

Thanks b for your diligence.
I have been on the www since near the beginning. From this I have learned to say your piece, defend it if you want. Don’t get invested.
There is a minority of people who love to formulate discord, the infamous trolls. Never let them get under your skin. Reasonable people can have bad days, different cultures or things they hate, which you might trigger.
Simply, calmly explain your position and move on. Keep your sense of humour.
I disagree with much of what people say on this site, a lot I also agree with. Hmm reminds me of family 🙂
Or a bar.

Posted by: Mighty Drunken | Sep 4 2022 22:54 utc | 101

“ I am an Iranian living in Canada for about 35 years, ever since I stepped in this country I tasted discrimination, labeling and treated as a third rated citizen. Everything that I do is being watched more carefully, and so you would understand that I am also more careful in my social media dealing and digital footprint. When 911 happened, people such as me were treated even worse, even though 911 had noting to do with Iran and Iranian. Non-the-less, I was a victim, same as many Russians living in the West today.”
Posted by Unknown-User
I am rather fascinated by this comment, the reason being that a have a good friend who immigrated to Canada’s west coast in the early 80s and his experience has been the polar opposite of yours. By way of family circumstances, he has dual Canadian-US citizenship and has traveled innumerable times back and forth between Vancouver and LA to visit or take care of his now deceased mother and other relatives.
I asked him about his border experiences and he stated that he has never ever been singled out or unduly delayed at any time including during the 9-11 paranoia era. Moreover, he has never suffered from racist or discriminatory behaviour in either the US or in Canada. You might ask, does he outwardly look Persian? My reply would be ‘oh yeah’.
I have no reason to say all of this except to observe how it is so at odds with your own unfortunate experience.

Posted by: nwwoods | Sep 4 2022 23:22 utc | 102

Posted by: RDF2 | Sep 4 2022 22:44 utc | 103
domesticated cat with a learning disability, never learned to use the litter box, sad.

Posted by: pretzelattack | Sep 4 2022 23:36 utc | 103

On VPNs
I live in China so the VPN is running all the time. I don’t know if MoA is blocked, but if not, I could turn it off when making the rare comment, if that helps. Currently am in the Philippines and not using it at all.
On MoA
It is evidently widely recognised as the authoritative place to go for informed commentary and btl input. Unsurprisingly in the current information war it is under attack from undesirables, best ignored. I live in the expectation every morning when tuning in that it will finally have been suppressed. I hope in the event that b is compiling an email group with our addresses, that he may be able to keep us informed of his strategy.
On cats.
I’m with Bevin et al, if anybody is keeping the score. It was reported in the UK a few years ago that they kill an estimated 200,000 birds and small mammals there every year. I had a bird table back in the UK, and there were always a couple of them lurking underneath.

Posted by: Walt | Sep 5 2022 0:32 utc | 104

@Ernesto Che 22
Over the last few years I posted about 20 comments. None of them failed to post. Something is very strange on your end.

Posted by: JessDTruth | Sep 5 2022 0:36 utc | 105

Tom_Q_Collins | Sep 4 2022 19:09 utc | 76
Can’t count the # of times the wife has relayed to me a message from her social media about neighbors finding their kitties’ carcasses or their cats simply going missing on the same night coyotes were spotted.
What a coincidence. I can’t count the # of times your wife has relayed to me a message from her social media while you were out spotting coyotes…

Posted by: John_Q_Public | Sep 5 2022 0:44 utc | 106

Posted by: John_Q_Public | Sep 5 2022 0:44 utc | 109
Have at it. She’s more loyal than any cat and smarter than any troll.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Sep 5 2022 0:45 utc | 107

This comment section is being attacked. People need to understand that an information war of unprecedented scale is ongoing and it goes far beyond competing arguments, overt trolling, and DDOS attacks. All corporate social media (twitter, FB, YT, etc) is heavily complicit in permitting NATO bot networks to operate, shadowbanning & banning dissenting accounts, promoting pro-Ukraine/NATO content, and willingly acting as tools of US intelligence. The scale, format, and complicit management of these platforms allows for more programmatic control of discussions and the prevailing narrative.
Independent websites with established user bases are more labor-intensive to disrupt because bots & AI-generated comments are largely ineffective and administrators (like b) aren’t going to delete users/comments at the request of some Latvian MI6 cutout. Instead they will try to change the conversation by working (often in teams) to promote counter-narratives, attack consensus, or make the entire thread toxic and derail the conversation altogether. Independent sites like MoA have come under increased attack recently and people need to be aware of the fact that state-affiliated and well-funded groups are working here. If a conversation appears contrived, as if it’s nudging users to reach a conclusion that seems out of place or inorganic, there is a good chance it is. There is no easy way to combat this programmatically or on the platform level, so people just need to keep their antennas up and look out for patterns.

Posted by: francesca | Sep 5 2022 0:54 utc | 108

And by the way, the entire off-topic cat conversation in this thread is an example of an intentional attempt to derail the discussion and poison the thread.

Posted by: francesca | Sep 5 2022 1:01 utc | 109

francesca 111-112
What she said.

Posted by: nato-bot | Sep 5 2022 1:03 utc | 110

Just a thought, B: it might be worth your while (if you have the time and the inclination) going back to your past posts on the Kyle Rittenhouse trial in November last year and see if the trolls pestering the comments threads attached to those posts share the same IP addresses as Ostro and his/her clone avatars do.

Posted by: Jen | Sep 5 2022 1:26 utc | 111

Good work B!
I would just add one thing, I post by this name here (I’m an occasional commenter – although I do see I feature in one of Ostro’s replies) – sometimes the autocorrect on this phone does change the name I input from Julian to Julien.
I can imagine it can also do this in more extreme forms.
For instance, this phone often changes “some” to “done” or “times” to “ribbed” or “or” to “outer” – completely different words.
The point I’m making is, there will be times when someone might accidentally rename themselves if they don’t check.
This may appear as ‘sock-puppetting’ but it may be an accident.
I guess you need to take those into consideration when you may be investigating a situation.

Posted by: Julian | Sep 5 2022 1:51 utc | 112

francesca | Sep 5 2022 0:54 utc | 111
I agree. Interesting to see how professional trolling works. You have to build up confidence first by sharing some principles of the community, before you start disruptive posting. As a stupid stranger to the blog nobody would bother your insults.
But I am confident that MoA will not derail. There is a special tenor in all posts, and even tough critique is always founded on arguments. Trolls and bots cannot compete with the intellectual level of this kind of discussion.

Posted by: njet | Sep 5 2022 2:55 utc | 113

Langley trolls

Posted by: Nick | Sep 5 2022 3:16 utc | 114

b, I’m still here you banned me once for reasons still blurs to me… I used an Eng or Anglo-Saxon name to hide my real ethnicity… extremely pessimist person and nationalistic too… being bullied all my life but still completed successful engineering and top management careers.. Decided not to care anymore. I’m not arrogant but often unable to articulate properly. I’m neither a racist but get along very well with the underclass, poor.. Especially Moslem… born before ww2 in the pacific.. and witnesses so much pain and suffering by the Japanese and colonial Govt. I always prefer vids than reading essay or scripts…. bad eyes’ sight and spot blank memory…
One of my long lists of careers was a turbine engineer similar… to Siemens gas turbines now shutdown pipe line in Ukraine….General Electric Apparatus Service we repaired gas Turbine rotor shafts, turbine blades transition pieces… I also designed fixtures, trained and certified welders welding super alloy… was a member of AWS.. In the 70s..Hastolloy X and Rene 41 alloy (casting not hot rolled) were the most heat resistance materials… our competitors were BBC and French Alstom absorbed by GE..
Thank you b…. My interest only China, China and Russia, Russia..take care please

Posted by: JC | Sep 5 2022 5:34 utc | 115

Hi all, thank you and B for the explanations of what can cause a post to go awry. After six months of reading virtually the entirety of the MOA posts and comments, last week I felt that I had a small contribution to make to the discussion. But after much labor to make it as interesting and informative as I could (nothing of great significance though, to be honest), it vanished into the void! I was so depressed, I vowed to stop this terrible MOA habit. But perhaps now I will be back, I hope it is ok to use today’s thread for this test post.

Posted by: TM | Sep 5 2022 5:58 utc | 116

Big thank you to “b”! I know it’s very difficult to deal with these attacks, and over time MoA has gotten a large enough following that screams ALERT! to others with nefarious intent. You handled this well, and for what ever it’s worth, I appreciate you, your blog, and all the efforts you make on it. Thank you.

Posted by: Rufus Arrr | Sep 5 2022 6:40 utc | 117

Posted by: JC | Sep 5 2022 5:34 utc | 116
Man, you have been around. Glad you are still with us. Sorry about the bullying, had some of that myself, the best revenge is living well.
Having lost work many times through laziness, now with anything “important” I write it off-line and copy and paste it in.

Posted by: Bemildred | Sep 5 2022 7:20 utc | 118

Posted by: njet | Sep 5 2022 2:55 utc | 114
They won’t prevail for a number of reasons, not least because they rely on brute force tactics and censorship, both of which require complicit moderators or administration. It’s not difficult to win debates when you simply ban all of your opponents and the moderators allow you (or even assist) to drown out opponents’ voices with a swarm of low-quality & bot comments. This is the main reason that sites like reddit became unusable around 2015/16, quickly joined by twitter, facebook, youtube, and even niche platforms like quora. Administrative privileges to content moderation or a direct line to internal teams were given directly to state-affiliated agencies. Even long-established, once purely algorithmically-driven products like Google search (that don’t even feature user-generated content) chose to throw away their reputation and start manually curating and ranking results to suit political and foreign relations agendas.
Their power & effectiveness relies purely on having direct control of the platforms themselves. They do not have truth or facts on their side, which is why they rely so much on censorship, hysterical projection, and low-quality repetition. Even internal CIA tools are mostly garbage that would get nowhere without the tech platforms and ISPs giving them direct access to data. Their human influence teams that operate on sites like MoA are usually contractors based in (coincidentally) Ukraine, Eastern Europe & the Balkans, and low-income SE Asian countries like the Phillippines. They’re usually employed through third-party shell companies and aren’t particularly intelligent or well paid, mostly performing menial grunt work. Ukraine was the epicenter for this type of work well before the conflict kicked off, mainly for its relatively educated & tech competent population and low wages. Israel outsources most of its tech grunt work to the Ukraine as well. Anyway, I just thought I’d give my two cents from personal experience just so everyone knows who we’re dealing with here.

Posted by: francesca | Sep 5 2022 7:45 utc | 119

Thanks for clarifying this sockpuppeteering business b.
Trolls make me think of those ugly little Nordic elfin thingies- or fishing, and I guess both serve as metaphors for this practice.
And thank you for not publishing Debsisdead’s anticat posts. I’m becoming increasingly alarmed at the confidence of doctrinaire greenies, especially in Australia, to push for the elimination of this animal species. O.K., feral cats are destructive, but do you realise how hurtful and fearful this attitude can be to those humans who love their pet cat? Perhaps you do not care, because (and here goes the chorus) “they kill 100,000 tiny creatures and birds every year”. Yeah, they have a hunting instinct, but it wanes with age and they do get fed- and how are these alarming figures calculated? Personally, I think they are calculated to promote the demise of felines as pets.
Humanity has always had domesticated cats, and they serve a purpose.
Thanks to William Gruff for your post. You never fail to delight.
Intelligent Dasein- Your comments are invariably fascinating, but I found them over at Unz, I think? Take heart.
As for Ostro, I appreciated the translated speeches.
Lauren Michelle- Walking with JoJo on a leash is impressive. I scooped up a tiny feral kitten in Anatolia 12 years ago, and this Turkish feline has sailed the Meditteranean, the southern Atlantic, the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean in a little yacht-just the three of us, and is now retired in Australia. He loved eating deck stranded flying fish, leaving just glistening fish eyeballs in the cockpit. He got lost in Havana for 3 days. He’s had many adventures and survived. His name is Mavi. Not nice to think some people would rather he was a Davey Crockett hat!
Again, thanks b. for allowing me this indulgence.

Posted by: Australian lady | Sep 5 2022 8:43 utc | 120

Posted by: francesca | Sep 5 2022 7:45 utc | 120
“ostro” seems more intent on disrupting the process of debate and discussion, while somebody like yenwoda or the ghost of kiev seem intent on influencing the viewpoints of the community, more like classic propaganda. maybe just different tactics by the same group, or maybe different groups.

Posted by: pretzelattack | Sep 5 2022 8:44 utc | 121

I am glad you found and banned this troll I was getting little disturbed by some of the comments wondering why are you here, this is not the site for you, I began to doubt that I am on the right site to my knowledge this is not right and my views don’t match what I am reading

Posted by: les1946 | Sep 5 2022 9:04 utc | 122

Posted by: pretzelattack | Sep 5 2022 8:44 utc | 122
In addition to the two tactics you mentioned, another one to watch for is users being first to comment on a new post in order to try and set the conversation. A bot is often used to ensure they make the first comment, which is why the comment itself ends up being somewhat generic and not directly related to the post itself (but related enough to the theme of the site & recent postings so not to raise suspicion). Subsequent users & posts will work off that first comment to try and control the overall conversation.
It’s tough to say whether the nefarious MoA users are part of a group working in concert, disparate individuals with a common aim, or a combination of the two. I don’t think it matters at this point as they’re working for a shared agenda and will take cues from others on how to react. I would just advise users to look out for posting patterns that seem out of place and try to identify behavior trends in larger samples if certain users seem suspicious.

Posted by: francesca | Sep 5 2022 9:25 utc | 123

The analysis does not seem convincing to me. Any large proxy network or VPN will have many registrations. A single IP can be a front of any large office, household, internet café or dorm which can have multiple MoA fans. Trolling can only be determined by content itself IMO. Although some of that seem to have been happening, the ostro and ppp actions do not sound like anything to act upon. Then again, I realize one could follow a gut instinct here. The impersonation element is worrying indeed but I don’t see the link with the origin. If a VPN organization is large and popular enough, dozens of active members here are to be expected.
That said, thanks for the laborious work and sharing of your actions. It doesn’t seem anything will miss the banned accounts.

Posted by: John Dowser | Sep 5 2022 10:46 utc | 124

I would just like to add my thanks to b for all the hard work he puts in to keep us all informed.
This was one of the first sites that helped me to see what was really going on. I have referenced it many times in an effort to persuade my friends to challenge the dominant narrative (without sucess, sadly).
I am still angry about what is happening, but at least I get the truth here.

Posted by: echelon | Sep 5 2022 10:52 utc | 125

I’ve been away from MoA for quite some time spending (too much??) time on Telegram. A day or so ago I came across a video clip announcing that the W.E.F./Davos infestation were freaking out that too many had seen through the recent psy-op & the attempt to push their ‘Great Reset’/4IR/’Own nothing & be happy’ project could potentially flounder. So apparently they’ve employed/contracted 150,000 ‘disrupters’ or shills – call them what you will – to push back against the ‘awakening of the useless eaters’. IF true, that’s going to flood comment sections even more than it already is, tie up moderators & site owners & generally cause distractions & derail the real work, spreading the reality of the planned destruction of our way of life.
Thanx for this peek behind the scenes “B” – I had no idea that it was as time consuming as you have described. Dead time that you can never get back.

Posted by: KiwiKris | Sep 5 2022 11:48 utc | 126

Have been reading this blog since March. First comment today.
Thanks for all your work and your always interesting insights.

Posted by: Alexander P | Sep 5 2022 15:51 utc | 127

I also just want to say that I’m very glad this issue was exposed. I’ve suspected similar happenings on other sites, so it’s nice to have a concrete example of it.

Posted by: Intelligent Dasein | Sep 5 2022 16:02 utc | 128

@Bevin 45
The world would be a better place without cats
The same could be said, with more accuracy, about humans. And if it had happened early enough, there would have been no dogs.

Posted by: Hermit | Sep 5 2022 16:32 utc | 129

Part of the problem is the software. Compare to Zero Hedge for example, which has far more trolls than here. Trolls on ZH can be spotted by their low comment score and date they joined (usually right after some major event) both of which are available in the member’s profile, where they can also provide a bio or statement of position if they so wish. Granted the comment scores can introduce bias, but that comes with the territory anyway if the blog takes a political stand, which most do. Two other features that are lacking here. An ignore button, which makes it a personal choice if you don’t want to read certain posters, thus avoiding censorship from the top, and nested comments which make it a lot easier to follow the dialogue.

Posted by: ebear | Sep 5 2022 21:24 utc | 130

Humans herd animals. They will tend to follow the pack.
Blogs like MOA and saker where intelligent people try to see through official narratives are targets for propaganda organs to manage the direction of intelligent influence communities.
There may be some odd ball loners doing strange things for attention here, but there are also sophisticated operatives from the professional PR world and intelligence agencies at work in these forums.

Posted by: Sideshow Bob | Sep 6 2022 6:27 utc | 131

I wish to add to the volume of comments above thanking you for the site and your efforts to enable discussion. Your desire to refrain from a login based system is commendable. Lets hope the sockpuppeteers get bored.

Posted by: yesxorno | Sep 8 2022 7:45 utc | 132

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Posted by: satta indian | Sep 26 2022 11:50 utc | 133

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