xp_logs | Digging deeper - part 3 (Reply)

xp_trance posting in

After two days of researching, social media is covered and finally some conclusions are drawn.

"You know what would be an amazing power?" A blonde head pulled up from the screen as Sue ran the back of her hand through her hair as she leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes to give them a break from the screen light. "Coffee, the ability to just generate coffee, that would be excellent right now."

"Call the medlab or one of those private companies. They might hook you up to one of those IVs with caffeine and other 'nutrients". Hope commented drily, the light of the screen reflecting in her own eyes. "I could use one of them as well. All four organizations need a better social media person. The tweets are mind numbingly boring. Except for some of the Sapiens Foundation. They look more slick."

"Like I said before, banality is how they hide their intent," Doug told her. "If this Sapiens Foundation or whatever has a more polished look, that may mean they're angling to be the face of whatever 'movement' they're pushing. Sometimes the pattern is highlighted by the thing that doesn't fit."

"No, it is more than that." Hope narrowed her eyes. "Maybe I have seen too much public relations writing, but something feels off about the tweets. They almost seem to match the bots that are happily retweeting all of this..." Pulling her eyes from the screen she twisted around and glanced at Sue and Doug. "They would not..."

Doug snorted. "You really think that?" he asked Hope rhetorically. "They absolutely would, and you know it. That's how astroturfing works, after all. Portray yourself as the champion of a 'silent majority', represented by people parroting your talking points. In pre-Internet times you used push polls, these days there's a bot for everything."

"It's scarily easy to set up," Sue pointed out, "And pretty cheaply too. Those bots, they're not hard to make or buy and then you just need some basic machines and low and behold the voices of your majority. Hard to disprove them too if you needed to."

A mischievous grin flitted over Hope's face. "Of course I do not think that, but both of you did a great job of pretending you fell for it." Pulling up a follower tool, she entered each handle and pulled up the follower list. "Most of these handles appear to be created en masse just a few months ago."

Doug's entirely mature response was to stick his tongue out at Hope before turning back to the account data. "Now if we can just figure out who created them..."

***

Hope eyed the various small whiteboards they’d put up. On each of them were the most important facts and associations of each website author they’d pulled up, including a headshot if they had them.

"Is it just me, but are some of them looking really thin? There should be far more information on them if it was a normal background check."

Doug methodically folded scraps of paper, keeping his hands busy as his mind pored through what they'd found. "This whole thing has read like a carefully crafted veneer of authenticity over acres and acres of astroturf since we started," he provided his read on things. "Your average news viewer or internet browser doesn't have the skills or the time to do as much thorough digging as we've done, so it looks legit to the casual eye."

Throwing him an annoyed look, Hope shot back. "Avoiding tunnel vision, remember?" Letting out a small sigh, she soon conceded: "Though it looks like you were right from the beginning. Alright, let us see if we can figure out which ones are pure aliases. Sue, which ones do you think?" She tossed her girlfriend a red marker.

Delicate fingers plucked the marker out of the air as she stood,, tapping the pen against her lips thoughtfully, "Tunnel vision isn't bad, as long as there's someone watching and keeping a larger view on everything but...I think this and this and/...this," the pen scored circles around three users, "are the same person, too many repeated idioms."

Doug glanced at the circles. "Concur," he declared. "I mean, come on, Hope," he said more gently. "You bring the pattern recognizer on, he's gonna call out patterns where he sees them." He spread his hands and shrugged a bit sheepishly. Hope was right about his cynicism, but he also didn't feel like he'd been off the mark very much at all either.

"It is one of the big reasons I asked you to help." Hope conceded with a few words, taking up a purple marker of her own. "This man's word choice is subtly different from the others... like he has been steeped in a different environment. And it is familiar." Pulling over a folder, she quickly scanned through his associations. "Friends of Humanity... that explains a lot. So now we have three definite fakes, one Friends of Humanity and the rest..."

"There will be some genuine accounts mixed in there, but I'll bet if we look we'll find one or two more people running multiple accounts. If they have a trick that works, most people don't mix it up," Sue pointed out as she leaned back on the edge of the table.

"And the longer they think they're getting away with things, the more lax they'll get," Doug agreed. "So we watch for the lazy shortcuts - copying whole blocks of text, similar styles of naming accounts, and so forth."

"It does sound like we have our next steps." Hope scanned the different white boards till something caught her attention. "This background check reveals him as a contributor to Humanity First. With that name I am immediately suspicious. Sue, can you pull up the website so we can see what it is?"

An eyebrow was arched but fingers willingly tapped across the keyboard as Sue pulled up the website's details on the screen. "What're you thinking?"

A photo gallery immediately filled the screen, names and basic facts of the person in the photo beneath them. "That this website has great potential to be the stick. We've seen other websites like this before... beneath each one photo the data of how this person violated the principles of 'Humanity First'."

Doug's face hardened. "The moment someone questions the orthodoxy, they are a traitor and must be rooted out." He picked one photo at random and read the text beneath it. "And they stop just shy of providing any legally protected personal information, but they make it plenty clear who and where they are. Enough for someone who knows them in passing to figure out. And at that point it's practically open season. But the leadership's hands stay clean."

"We've seen things like this happen before," Sue agreed, "that vagueness works in their favor, cause they obviously didn't mean a specific person, and they get to walk away after wrecking someone's life. But, short of slipping some of their leadership into that list and let them reap what they sow?"

"I will add it to the list for things to research. With how this is shaping up, I would not be surprised if they are involved somehow."