IF YOU thought sock puppets were made merely for the amusement of small children, think again. In cyberspace, a sock puppet is a vandal鈥檚 alter ego, an additional account that they use to pose as a different user and tamper with facts and dishonestly promote alternative viewpoints.
First used maliciously on internet message boards in the mid-1990s, sock puppets are the flip side of one of the web鈥檚 great triumphs 鈥� collaboration between people anywhere in the world. Since then, a type of website known as a wiki has evolved, with the aim of promoting collaborations and knowledge-sharing. Anybody can add information to a wiki or edit the existing content, which makes them easy targets for vandals. Perhaps the most famous wiki is Wikipedia, the hugely popular people鈥檚 encyclopaedia that presents a continuously updated consensus of knowledge. Between July 2002 and December 2005, Wikipedia鈥檚 contributors made more than 31,323,000 edits between them.
So how do you police the world of wikis? Wikipedia asks that people log in, giving a name, before they can create new topics, although anybody can edit content anonymously. But the vandals can easily get around this system by signing in as their alter egos. So Wikipedia relies on honest editors to root out the bad apples by debating and agreeing changes.
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鈥淥ne academic used a sock puppet to review his own book鈥�
This can work well. Last month, Nature published an investigation into Wikipedia鈥檚 science entries (vol 438, p 900), and concluded that they were about as accurate as those in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is edited by an in-house team. But it can fail spectacularly. In November, a vandal rewrote the Wikipedia entry about Norway鈥檚 prime minister, falsely accusing him of being a convicted paedophile. The entry was rapidly removed. The incident came shortly after John Seigenthaler, a prominent US newspaper editor during the Civil Rights era, was made aware of a biography of himself on Wikipedia that falsely implicated him in the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy. In the ensuing scandal, the person behind the false entry was pursued by internet sleuths and eventually confessed. The incident forced Wikipedia to tighten its rules for contributors.
Sock puppets have become increasingly sophisticated since the mid-90s. Some people even use sock puppets to oppose their own ideas with poorly thought-out arguments they then brush aside with a more persuasive line of thought. Companies have been known to create and even hire sock puppets to promote their products and services. And one academic was caught using a sock puppet to review his own book and to pose as one of his students. It鈥檚 not just small children that sock puppets keep amused.
