UKC

Beware - Covid misinformation bots

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 wintertree 11 Oct 2020

I present:

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/the_pub/shield_the_vulnerable-726138?v=1#...

From 10:00 until 10:25 it is clear that a chatbot is handling my replies to new poster AndrewSmith45 - keywords in one message trigger the reply with a text matching query against supplied resources, other parts get ignored.  No reference to previous messages, absolutely no "state" - that is each reply exists purely in response to the previous post, not the wider discussion.  Some questions are answered by parroting the questioning text back with some pre-prepared boilerplate around it.

It looks like the human behind it checked in at 10:28.  Until then, each message I posted had an empty reply posted about 30 seconds later which would then be edited to have the response in.  I assume something about the edit form is easier for the system behind this to interface too. Now, there's a human back on the line.  I suggest anyone interested leave it be for an hour, then come back and try a few replies and see what happens...  Throw in a few simple keywords like a prominent country name, "cases" or "deaths" and see what comes back.

You might think this is a lot of effort to go to to push Covid misinformation, and that it must be costing someone a pretty penny.   Terrifying.

Edit: The plot thickens (see my screenshot below).

Edit: Their 10:45 reply is blank after ten minutes - gone to a supervisor?  

Post edited at 10:54

12
AndrewSmith45 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

Just because I'm paranoid, don't mean they're not after me. Next time you encounter a 'chat bot' try speaking to it like a human being and not a piece of filth on your shoe. You might get a more human response.
Post edited at 10:44
34
AndrewSmith45 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

My name is Andrew Smith, I'm 45 and I've been a bricky since I was 12. I started climbing a year ago after watching free solo and feeling inspired. It wasn't my first time climbing because I'd taken part in guided top rope days on two separate holidays in Thailand. My first route was 'Boobtube' up the far end of Ton Sai and my last route was 'humanaility' on the beach. I've been logging on to UKC for two years with pseudonym. When I decided to join the forums I registered again with my actually name because I do not like to publish things online anonymously.
Post edited at 10:54
15
 Dave Garnett 11 Oct 2020
In reply to AndrewSmith45:

Which is your favourite wall, Andrew, and when did last go?

1
OP wintertree 11 Oct 2020
In reply to AndrewSmith45:

> I've been logging on to UKC for two years with pseudonym.

Your account was registered 1st October 2020.  It says so on your profile.  Odd that you claim to have registered a year before you started climbing and two years before your account was created.

Hey Siri, do you have any information on hospital admissions in France?

Edit: No empty auto-reply has opened to my message.  I’m guessing that operator isn’t making their weekly bonus.

Post edited at 10:59
6
AndrewSmith45 11 Oct 2020
In reply to Dave Garnett:

Hi Dave, my favorite wall is Awesome Walls in Liverpool where I was going with my son once a week since October last year. We stopped when lockdown stared and haven't been since. We also went to The Works a few times last Winter when the grit conditions were poor. I thought the route setting there was on another level.
Post edited at 11:06
9
AndrewSmith45 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

See this is why I ignore a lot of what you say. You don't read what I say. People make false accusations about the links I post and the people I discuss. If you can't be bothered to get your facts right then I can't be bothered to have an argument about it.
Post edited at 11:08
11
OP wintertree 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

I’m offline and off to the seaside.  Look at their 11:06 reply to me - no engagement with anything I have said, and a lot of generic content.  If you reply to them, watch for the empty auto-created post that’s then edited to have content.

8
 marsbar 11 Oct 2020
In reply to AndrewSmith45:

So if you don't want to be anonymous, what was your previous UKC name?  

cp123 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

Hi Wintertree,

I think you got this one wrong.....

Signed,

The other person you were accusing of having a fake account.

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/off_belay/france_covid_cases_vs_deaths-72...

2
 Wainers44 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

I think you are right. He definitely isnt a brickie.  He posts after 3 in the afternoon for a start.....

4
 rlrs 11 Oct 2020
In reply to cp123:

I noticed an empty reply from AndrewSmith45 last night. It's a bit odd. 

I would rather hear about your solo of Unclimbed Wall though 🙂

1
cp123 11 Oct 2020
In reply to rlrs:

Its been on my bucket list to do it for years, mainly after seeing the picture of Gordon Stainforth do the same thing. The crux, whilst insecure, is totally fine if you use the correct method, and I must have climbed it 20+ times over the decades I have been going to Harrisons.

I like you pictures of the alps too.

 Mattyk 11 Oct 2020
In reply to AndrewSmith45:

Andrew what was the last trad route you did?

mick taylor 11 Oct 2020
In reply to AndrewSmith45:

Gotta find away....

no chatbot would sneak a lyric into their responses. Like it. 

 The New NickB 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

I noticed the strange blank posts last night. It does look odd.

 Dave Todd 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

Can anyone explain to me why most of Andrew's posts have the 'Post edited...' text at the end?

Is this just a feature of the method that he uses to post?

 FactorXXX 11 Oct 2020
In reply to mick taylor:

> Gotta find away....
> no chatbot would sneak a lyric into their responses. Like it. 

Isn't it a quote from Catch-22?

 FactorXXX 11 Oct 2020
In reply to Mattyk:

> Andrew what was the last trad route you did?

If you're judging credibility based on climbing, then the Top Poster on UKC seems to have achieved that by posting nothing about climbing either...

 timjones 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

How do we know that you aren't a "covid misinformaton bot"?

Post edited at 12:36
3
 Bacon Butty 11 Oct 2020
In reply to timjones:

> How do we know that you aren't a "covid misinformaton bot"?


'He' appears to be a Maths graphics package to me, with a text generation subroutine. 😄

 wilkie14c 11 Oct 2020
In reply to AndrewSmith45:

How about ending this once and for all by posting about your grit experiences and why the poor conditions that you mention? (afterall grit is generally better in winter) all without editing your post?

1
 The New NickB 11 Oct 2020
In reply to AndrewSmith45:

What grade is 3 Pebble Slab?

 Wainers44 11 Oct 2020
In reply to Bacon Butty:

> 'He' appears to be a Maths graphics package to me, with a text generation subroutine. 😄

I love it when you talk dirty....

mick taylor 11 Oct 2020
In reply to FactorXXX:

Might be, and a variant of Territorial Pissings by Nirvana. 

OP wintertree 11 Oct 2020
In reply to timjones:

> How do we know that you aren't a "covid misinformaton bot"?

You have to use your own judgement.  

1
AndrewSmith45 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wilkie14c:

We went to the peak, the weather was marginal and we left in rainy conditions. We went for a walk then we went to the Works. We did this twice. We go away most weekends and have been to quite a few walls in rainy conditions. Since lockdown we've learnt where to climb when it rains. The post editing thing seems to be to do with the browser I use, I'm trying to fix it.
Post edited at 13:24
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 profitofdoom 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

Wintertree, thanks for posting, but from my viewpoint I don't get the "beware" in the thread title, or the "terrifying" in your first post

I'd rather talk with / to a bot than a human

You might think I'm joking but my family would agree

Thanks again

1
 Blue Straggler 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

Whether real or not, he’s given the movie “Eurovision” the highest praise it’s received (depending on what else he has watched in the past few years of course )

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/culture_bunker/october_film_thread-725940...

AndrewSmith45 11 Oct 2020
In reply to Blue Straggler:

I was laughing for two hours straight! There's just something about Will Ferrell that tickles me rotten.
Post edited at 13:35
 petemeads 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

I have just read a few of the Pub thread entries and the voice and style of AndrewSmith45 looks familiar, certainly very similar to a Wikipedia editor calling himself Skeptic from Britain a couple of years ago.

That person managed to get Dr Malcolm Kendrick's bio page deleted from Wikipedia, then under a new name John66 became a RationalWiki editor with admin privileges to write a near-libellous equivalent bio which claims that the good doctor is a quack. At least one poster on this forum has been taken in by this derogatory non-information. Looks like UKC has attracted the same kind of attention. The time taken for replies to get through will be due to all the other forums he is juggling with simultaneously...

In reply to wintertree:

Either a bot pretending to be human or a human pretending to be a bot!

 john arran 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

I have no idea really to what extent bots may be responsible for some of his posts, but it wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that some bot-controllers may have migrated to a tactic of using genuine people's accounts - presumably with their paid consent - to feed mostly auto bot messages through their account, knowing that human involvement can be relied upon as required to maintain enough account credibility to not get banned or too easily dismissed by other site users.

In reply to wintertree:

It seems unlikely that any professional organisation would be bothered running sophisticated chatbot software on UKC.  It's too small a site and it has its own forum code so they'd need to customise whatever package they use.   

I'm sure there are multiple actors running bots to influence opinion - UK government, Russia, probably Trump/Brexit organisations funded by US political donors but I'd be surprised if they were targeting anything other than Facebook/Twitter and possibly large sites running standard chat software where the same code could target a whole bunch of sites.

If someone is running bot software on UKC it will be someone who is part of the climbing community and has a personal interest.

 Rob Parsons 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

> From 10:00 until 10:25 it is clear that a chatbot is handling my replies to new poster AndrewSmith45

If you think it's a Tar Baby, why do you continue to fight it?

Andy Gamisou 11 Oct 2020
In reply to AndrewSmith45:

> I was laughing for two hours straight! There's just something about Will Ferrell that tickles me rotten.

No legitimate human could find Will Ferrell that funny!

OP wintertree 11 Oct 2020
In reply to cp123:

> I think you got this one wrong.....

> Signed,

> The other person you were accusing of having a fake account.

I did not accuse you of anything.  I very carefully did not name or link to your account.  I never intended to, although you did chime in on that thread.

I raised my red flags to the OP for my concern on that thread and the uncanny number of similarities to another unnamed account.  I made it clear I considered that I might be being paranoid and did not outright accuse that OP of being a shill account - I asked thus: "Are you posting from a sock puppet account? Forgive my paranoid nature, but the flags include:" and gave a list of the 5 things that gave me pause for thought.  As it happens, there were a series of coincidences that explained my paranoia away.

As it happens, it seems my gut instinct spotted an uncanny number of links between you and that poster so if anything I'm taking that as a sign to trust my gut instinct on these things - it's never 100% right, but it's normally on to something...

Andy Gamisou 11 Oct 2020
In reply to AndrewSmith45:

> When I decided to join the forums I registered again with my actually name

And it's just an unfortunate coincidence that your name is a combination of just about the most common forename combined with the most common surname, thus making it nigh on impossible to match you to anything like facebook

OP wintertree 11 Oct 2020
In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

> It seems unlikely that any professional organisation would be bothered running sophisticated chatbot software on UKC.  It's too small a site and it has its own forum code so they'd need to customise whatever package they use.   

By bodging on some simple URL scraping that they've only managed to get working with the "edit post" mechanism rather than the "reply" mechanism?

 marsbar 11 Oct 2020
In reply to petemeads:

Is he the doctor that thinks Statins and smear tests don't save lives and we should all have some herbal remedies instead?  

I don't know him, but if it sounds like a duck...

OP wintertree 11 Oct 2020
In reply to john arran:

> knowing that human involvement can be relied upon as required to maintain enough account credibility to not get banned or too easily dismissed by other site users.

This is my take. The 10:00 to 10:25 period linked to in my OP is that which looks like a simple keyword query based bot, then it switches back to what looks like a person after that.

Perhaps I'm totally wrong, and I'm a paranoid raving lunatic, and we just have a person who spectacularly failed the Turing test in that period.

Given their rampant misinformation - posting e.g. to someone else who is clearly distressed by the situation (https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/the_pub/my_dad_covid_and_walking-726153?v...) - perhaps I've got too much cognitive dissonance (I'm often accused of it) to accept that a human being is going to come on here to spread such crap in a time of crisis and so I have no choice but to assume it's a bot.

But still, the 10:00 to 10:25 period linked in my OP speaks volumes.

4
In reply to wintertree:

> By bodging on some simple URL scraping that they've only managed to get working with the "edit post" mechanism rather than the "reply" mechanism?

It may be easy but somebody would need to justify to management getting a developer to look at the code on a niche website to even determine how hard it was.

I just don't see it - unless they have completely automated the process of bringing new website forums into their system.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

> It seems unlikely that any professional organisation would be bothered running sophisticated chatbot software on UKC.

UKC is the last vestige of all that is good social media wise from my own personal perspective. It's an oasis of reason. Now 'the giants' like facebook and twitter etc have been corrupted by the psych-profiling brigade; to control the population entirely (as is the want of some) malign players are going to obviously focus on our kind of communities.

I suspect we're a tough crowd to crack - fearless and ingenious.

OP wintertree 11 Oct 2020
In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

> It may be easy but somebody would need to justify to management getting a developer to look at the code on a niche website to even determine how hard it was.

Looks like a 2-3 hour job from the webpage source .  It's very simple, clear HTML with all the requisite state apparently in the HTML itself using clear ID numbers and simple mechanics.  (I like it lest my take be seen as derogatory, nothing wrong with clean simplicity).

OP wintertree 11 Oct 2020
In reply to Rob Parsons:

> If you think it's a Tar Baby, why do you continue to fight it?

Curiosity.  Draw out what's underneath.  

The last poster to do this that I suspected of this sort of thing got quickly banned, but before they did I got a set of stock responses out of them.  This let me find another account on an unrelated website using the exact same form of words from the day before (when nowhere else on the internet has ever used that exact same form of words before, let alone in a similar misinformation capacity - some coincidence!)  This in turn led me to more details about the person behind it that I won't publish or share, beyond the fact they advertise as a paid consultant in internet marketing.

Post edited at 15:41
 bouldery bits 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

So my hypothesis is that agent Smith is not only being paid to spread misinformation, he's also not particularly good at his job. 

Obviously, fancied a few minutes off to:

A) Explain to everyone on the horse and Hound forum that the moon landing was fake.

B) actually go climbing (this, may, be true!) 

C) it was lunchtime at the troll farm and the kettle for the Bombay Badboy pot noodle took longer to boil than expected and he had to phone the car insurance people to sort out some cover for his sister-in-law who's visiting from Stockholm. He'd rather not be doing this admin anyway but it's just not worth the hassle when he gets home if it's not sorted. Should've married Eva instead. Eva was fun. Staring mournfully over the rim of his gently steaming lunch in to the void. He sighs, failing yet again to beat that level on Candy Crush.

So, to buy time, he put the thing on autopilot. Then had to backtrack to cover up his tracks. He's actually spent the last hour trying to research climbing to counter Inspector Tree.

Imagine being bad at spreading misinformation. 

I mean, being bad at spreading actual information is understandable but being bad at making up baseless nonsense? 

Embarrassing.

Ofcourse, it's just a theory.

Edit: editted for the purpose of making you think I'm a robot. Like one of the Daft Punk Ones.

Post edited at 15:56
Nempnett Thrubwell 11 Oct 2020
In reply to bouldery bits:

Hey, give him credit. He must be the only bricky to have successfully resisted all attempts over 33 years to label him as an Andy.

I do wonder about people who put their age in years as a suffix to their username though. Obviously only live to a 364 day outlook.

OP wintertree 11 Oct 2020
In reply to FactorXXX:

> If you're judging credibility based on climbing, then the Top Poster on UKC seems to have achieved that by posting nothing about climbing either...

I used to post about climbing a decade ago, but if I let you all know that I only got as far as leading Northumberland VS before family life and career stuff took over I’d loose all credibility...

These days I barely get out climbing but I did chime in on a thread about some of the more esoteric local quarries a few months ago and was inspired enough to head out there and fall off into the sheep muck a few dozen times.  I also chimed in on sandbag chimneys recently but that’s dredged up memories I’d rather forget...

1
 petemeads 11 Oct 2020
In reply to marsbar:

I think you have just proved my point, another victory for the Skeptics...

OP wintertree 11 Oct 2020
In reply to bouldery bits:

I pretty much agree with your take, although some details are probably missing from 'C', like the Bad Santa poster over their desk.

> Imagine being bad at spreading misinformation. [...] Embarrassing.

I don't think it's the kind of work you end up in by being good at something.

 lorentz 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

Beep boop

>....*malfunction error code 420/69  *

>... Secondary power source detected...

>...re routing power to primary circuit...

I say, well done old chap, for routing out this malevolent presence lurking amongst us. You wouldn't believe that people actually have time and are even possibly paid to try and influence a bunch of chippy climbing types who like nothing better than sticking to their chosen position and arguing with strangers on't'interweb...

Hmmm memories... I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate, the R number actually falling in the north west. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain...

Edit : wake up sheeple. We're all just digits trapped in the matrix.

Edit : I'm a real boy 

OP wintertree 11 Oct 2020
In reply to lorentz:

I hope you’re right and I’m the whack job here.  

There’s a rash of new accounts opening to post the same threadbare misinformation on covid however.  They generally don’t last long. 

Its no secret that a massive effort is going in to pushing false information on social media over this, eg https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/internet...

3
 Kalna_kaza 11 Oct 2020
In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

> It seems unlikely that any professional organisation would be bothered running sophisticated chatbot software on UKC.  It's too small a site and it has its own forum code so they'd need to customise whatever package they use.   

Could this make it the perfect proving ground for testing new bot software? Try it out first on a small but active discussion forum and tweak the bot in response to considered replies rather than most of the dross seen on larger platforms.

> I'm sure there are multiple actors running bots to influence opinion - UK government, Russia, probably Trump/Brexit organisations funded by US political donors...

There must be companies who are developing products to then sell to said organisations.

> If someone is running bot software on UKC it will be someone who is part of the climbing community and has a personal interest.

You're probably right, but they may have connections to a bigger outfit.

1
 lorentz 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

> I hope you’re right and I’m the whack job here.  

> There’s a rash of new accounts opening to post the same threadbare misinformation on covid however.  They generally don’t last long. 

> Its no secret that a massive effort is going in to pushing false information on social media over this, eg https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/internet...

Sorry. A large amount of tongue in cheek going on on my part. My meanings are fairly opaaque oftentimes. I happen to agree with you though actually. There are some pretty suss accounts on here. Some folk I just don't respond to anymore as they seem bent on mischief... But then I'm a fairly paranoid Android at the best of times.

Post edited at 17:30
OP wintertree 11 Oct 2020
In reply to lorentz:

Sorry; I lost my humour chip a few weeks ago.... 

Bzzzt.

1
 MG 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

I think you are right. There are various highly dubious accounts. They seem somehow connected, reply to each other etc. I have reported by UKC clearly not convinced. 

 marsbar 11 Oct 2020
In reply to petemeads:

That's from his own blog, not anywhere else.  Feel free to persuade me otherwise, I'm open to the idea.  

In reply to Kalna_kaza:

> You're probably right, but they may have connections to a bigger outfit.

Yes,  there are lots of people with tech backgrounds on UKC, climbing seems to appeal to scientists and engineers.

Could well be people on here who are involved in other stuff at work.

 bouldery bits 11 Oct 2020
In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

C.H?

OP wintertree 11 Oct 2020
In reply to MG:

> I think you are right. There are various highly dubious accounts. They seem somehow connected, reply to each other etc

There was similar in March/April, also coming from an anti-lockdown agenda then.

Thats the real story - assisted by a chat bot or not, someone somewhere is running shill accounts across social media to push a lethal and divisive message at critical points in the crisis.  Given the apparent role of symptom free super spreading in this mess, not that many people have to be nudged towards carelessness to make a difference.

1
 MG 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

More concerning still is the difficulty in knowing. Turing? 

OP wintertree 11 Oct 2020
In reply to MG:

I was debating this with myself.  Do bots pass the Turing test or do humans who unknowingly converse with them fail it?

1
In reply to wintertree:

Yes, I’d spotted the blank posts. Also felt that there was something incongruous about the posting style- I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I asked “Andrew” what his motivations were for posting, why was he spending so much of his time arguing a point he seemed oddly diffident about at times. He didn’t reply. I think you’re right about “him”.

2
 FactorXXX 11 Oct 2020
In reply to mick taylor:

> Might be, and a variant of Territorial Pissings by Nirvana. 

Isn't it more likely that the Nirvana lyric is a variant of the quote from Catch-22?

 SouthernSteve 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

> Do bots pass the Turing test or do humans who unknowingly converse with them fail it?

People don't read to understand they read to reply, often with a personal agenda in mind. Makes seeing a logical sequence in some of these threads impossible. We all get a bit caught up in this from time to time when our minds are full of ideas.

An interesting thread.

OP wintertree 11 Oct 2020
In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:

Incongruous is a good word for it.

Two posts from “him” on this thread; one appears to recognise and respond to the context of the thread in a human way, the other looks like it’s straight out of the misinformation databank.   Like this thread, that one had “covid” in the title.  

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/the_pub/my_dad_covid_and_walking-726153?v...

2
 bouldery bits 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

I've been a chat bot all along. Got ya!

From,

Bouldery_Bot

 Jon Stewart 11 Oct 2020
In reply to timjones:

> How do we know that you aren't a "covid misinformaton bot"?

The same way we know you spend your free time fantasising about nibbling on Peter Hitchens nutsack.

1
OP wintertree 11 Oct 2020
In reply to bouldery bits:

You're just putting it on because I didn't bite over the C.H. reference.  That was a dark matter for UKC.  That thread disappeared in to a black hole.  

In reply to wintertree:

Looking back I’m wrong- it was “Andrew’s“ tag-team pal, “joeblow” I was thinking of- who was, of course, “just questioning” things- but only seemed to “question” certain things, and seemed remarkably immune to being persuaded to reflect on his position for someone who was just trying to get to the bottom of matters. 

“Andrew” was a little different- for someone seemingly new to the forum, and so quick to play the naive brickie, he arrived with fully formed skills at holding his own in heated debate, seemed to have prepared “attack lines“ which I suppose he could have picked up from reading the usual suspects from the right wing media, but he appeared to be more comfortable using these than just having casual acquaintance with them. He was also prepared to brazen it out when called out on these, not accepting there was a problem with his argument but just ignoring evidence to the contrary. While that won’t win over the undecided, they, and we, aren’t his audience- I suspect people who are inclined to think that way will be nodding along when reading his posts, and will feel encouragement to strengthen their position by seeing it repeated over and over.  
 

but if it’s true, and even UKC is being targeted, it’s ubiquitous then. Not a pleasant thought.

1
Nempnett Thrubwell 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

I'm most impressed that he was the first to respond to this thread - calling him out - and pretty quickly after your post.  Threads with 'bot' in the title must set off the klaxons at bot hq causing the operators to scramble back to their terminals.

 Jon Stewart 11 Oct 2020
In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:

> Looking back I’m wrong- it was “Andrew’s“ tag-team pal, “joeblow” I was thinking of- who was, of course, “just questioning” things

I think joeblow's alright, but andrew is being paid to fail miserably at pushing a shitty agenda. For quite what purpose I don't know, but whatever it is, he needs to f*ckety bye.

2
 Darron 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

Yes, if they are bothered to target our sh*t here it’s scary what’s happening more generally. If it carries on people might even vote to leave the EU or elect a narcissist dicktator (see what I did there😉) as the leader of the free world.

Removed User 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

As i fail the UKC Voight-Kampff test I think I'm a bot; registered recently, false address, don't climb grit nor indoors, push a radical centrist, futilitarian, anti-Trump agenda.

Better let my wife know...

OP wintertree 11 Oct 2020
In reply to Dave Todd:

> Can anyone explain to me why most of Andrew's posts have the 'Post edited...' text at the end?

> Is this just a feature of the method that he uses to post?

They always reply with a blank post which is then edited to insert content.  It took over 9 minutes for the content to appear in the second reply to this thread, despite both replies opening within minutes of me starting the thread.  It’s notable that the first reply is pretty generic and fast, whilst the second reply is still brief but is more customised to the thread and took 9 minutes before it was inserted via the “edit” function.

Have you ever been rung by a robo caller?  You answer the phone.  Click.  Silence as their system tried to find a free human to connect to the wire...

They’ve claimed it’s a “browser issue” - one unique to them apparently.  This would only be mildly suspicious if they hadn’t also just signed up a few days ago, made a few pretty generic posts and then suddenly started spaffing covid misinformation all over the place.  They appear to be back to the generic posts now.  What makes it more suspicious still is that we had another new account with a username of “ForenameSurname” a couple of weeks back that had a few generic posts, then started spaffing covid misinformation everywhere, then got banned.

2
 The New NickB 11 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

Yes, old John Thomas was a bit suspect.

OP wintertree 11 Oct 2020
In reply to The New NickB:

> Yes, old John Thomas was a bit suspect.

One might almost think the operator of both accounts was the same person.  As I said to JT last time around:

No, I’d rather clean the dog shit off my footwear and refer you to my voluminous UKC posts that have done this to death, rather than read a very few cherry picked links from a bloody obvious sock puppet account if it’s all the same to you.

Today’s obvious shill account spaffing the same covid misinformation links opened their response to me on this thread with:

Next time you encounter a 'chat bot' try speaking to it like a human being and not a piece of filth on your shoe.

They’re a persistent bugger, I’ll give them that.

2

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