Our pet troll, Ivan

I don't think so, they just fall off b/c people get bored with them.

Cycloptichorn

he/she/it had a little trouble with the tymeshenko threads this morning

Isn't all political propaganda spam?
Actually, I think he's sincere in his political belief, it just happens to be not
the mainstream what we would consider acceptable politics. The Ukraine is
split almost 50/50 where the pro Russian leader, Viktor Yanukovych claims
victory over pro-Eropean Yulia Tymoshenko, who demands a recount. The country is torn and is looking for support outside their borders.

We remember the Al Gore/George Bush election and the hoopla thereafter.

This isn't any different, just not as interesting to the outside world (Ukraine)
as the U.S. election was when Gore/Bush run.

Then again, it might be Ramafuchs coming back!

Generally, "spam" is defined as both "unsolicited" and "commercial". So I don't think Ivan qualifies.

Yes, and we should have started long ago, before the sock puppetry got to crazy levels (hundreds of accounts/threads, whole tags dominated by their posts).

On forums, a lot of times various kinds of "flooding" or any disruptive, repetitive posting, whether or not it's commercial, is considered spam.

But whatever it is called, that kind of sock puppetry has to be removed when encountered.

sock puppetry
Ha! I like that.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f8/Internet_dog.jpg/180px-Internet_dog.jpg

on the internet nobody knows your a dog

peter steiner's cartoon

Hey, I've learned how to do this!!!

woof

Good. My secret's safe!

Once I caught on to the pattern, I alway just delete and never tag, me an semi-inveterate tagger. Took me a while, as I'm interested in international issues.

I don't think you've been paying attention to the pattern of the posts of this clown over a period of several years--perhaps as many as five years now. I have taken to tagging the threads Russian propaganda, because that is what they are. The obsessive focus for quite a while was Georgia. Now that Russians have successfully undermined the national sovereignty of Georgia, this joker has moved on.

I have opined in the past that the clown is an FSB agent. In one respect, i find it hilarious, because if so, the FSB is paying this guy to disseminate disinformation, and the effect is not as intended. His English is so bad, that nobody here is fooled by him, especially when he starts talking about "we" and attempting to inferentially suggest that he lives in the United States. But it is entirely possible that this guy and his masters take his efforts very seriously. In that, they are deluded. Most Americans very likely don't give a rat's ass about the Ukraine. And, of course, no American is gonna think this guy is an American.

But the notion that this joker is sincere is naive at best.

This is actually a good question and largely why they got away with it for so long. We aren't going to delete based on what is and is not propaganda. We are deleting based on a patter of sock puppet activity combined with political astroturfing.

They are using automated means of posting from different accounts (sometimes in a patter of username1 then username10) from different IP addresses in order to generate huge amounts of topics (in the hundreds) and at some point we need to defend ourselves against that. Whole tags were dominated by their posts and burying real discussion.

So we aren't about to start political censorship or trying to define propaganda we find unacceptable, and even trying to define intent or sincerity and we also aren't going to go nuts if someone has more than one account. But when we get such volumes of astroturfing we are going to remove it. We aren't here to be a platform for that kind of thing and it was just ridiculous how many of these posts they were allowed to make on a2k (under policy I was responsible for).

collective sighs of relief hugely

on with the propagandimpropaganda