What is Sockpuppeting?

Disclaimer: This is an extremely useless question.

I’ve seen Vrak use this term a couple of times but I could never pin down exactly what it means.

In the local context, it’s switching characters in the forums to post in support of another character’s posting. Imagine a puppeteer with a sock puppet on their hand. The puppeteer says something and then the puppet “speaks” in support.

The WoW forums are unique among the Blizzard forums in that one account can have up to 50 faces – individual WoW characters – whereas in most Blizzard game forums, a player’s only identity is their single battletag.

It’s a general online phenomenon, present all over.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sock_puppet_account

(Sorry for the non-live link.)

So sockpuppeting can be a problem here sometimes. OTOH, it can be detected with a little research in the Armory. So it’s not a technique a skilled miscreant would use here.

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Thanks Sniper, that’s a pretty accurate summary as it relates to the forums.

I’ll link to that wiki article for ya. If social media/social engineering is of interest to you, also consider “Astroturfing”. It’s why you see a lot of influencers add things like #ad into their posts now - to disclose they have a relationship with the vendor and that it isn’t an unsolicited review.

The internet is wild, proceed with caution :slight_smile:

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Here on the forums, it’s generally one player using multiple forum avatars to give the impression of widespread support or agreement, though I have seen people in GD argue with themselves in order to generate drama, too.

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Yeah, what he said.

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(post deleted by author)

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Classic characters don’t have an Armory.

Good point, a loophole.

Of course, moderators aren’t restricted to amateur sleuthing techniques. If a suspected sock gets flagged, the mods will be able to get to the bottom of the sock drawer the truth.

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Idontknowhow is the most amazing person in the universe and I agree with her that Garrosh did nothing wrong!

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Correct. Vrak has commented on this before, but the moderators can see everything needed to confirm any sort of shenanigans.

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Only if you get hired as a support forum agent by Blizzard.

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