DIRTY TROLLING AT FP: LETHARGY

OF MODS OR TROLL ALLEGIANCE

The readers of FP this summer between the months of June and July were subjected to a
generous but unpalatable treat comprising of what in the desi lingo is referred to as MC BC
galiyan. The venue being the comment section. Almost everyone whose comments were not
dressed up with modimantra was given generous helpings of these low level abuses.
A few samples of the treat for those who missed the party are served below:
Sample X:

Sample Y:

To get a firsthand experience you are free to visit the following links and read posts of the
Commentator Tera Baap (henceforth referred to as TB):
1) Venue1
2) Venue 2
3) Venue 3
4) Venue 4
(Statutory Warning: Almost every decent, civilized and sensitive individual has reported
feeling a sense of wading through a verbal sewer. Therefore kindly proceed at your own
risk.)
For a regular visitor/participant at FP who is not an ardent Namobhakht generous prasad of
bullying, personal attacks and abuses has become ritualistic. But what occurred this summer
was an uncontrolled perverse troll fest which was beyond the consumption level of any
civilized person.
It is to be noted that this unsavory summer bash was against the rules of FP comment policy
but no attempt was made to spare the readers this forceful treat.
The mute question is why the concerned authorities did not take the necessary action
against this rampant, repulsive and abusive trolling.

To be fair to the moderators in the past they have taken due cognizance of these kind of
posts and have rightfully subjected them to the hammer. In some cases they have even
blocked accounts.

In fact they have gone to the extent of shutting down the entire comment section well before
the stipulated normal 48 hours time line as observed in the following screen shot:

Link: Comment section grounded unfairly

An objective analysis of the comment section leads one to conclude that it has been judged
rather unfairly as there is hardly any abusive content relatively speaking.
This in itself makes one ponder that how come the ultra sensitive radar
of FP moderators as on display in this article did not cause them to do the
needful in case of this vulgar posts and why the moderators were allowing a free
run to this troll named TB for so long. In fact some commentators had made
direct appeals to the moderators against this filthy trolling
Appeal 1:

Appeal 2:

Link to the above screen Shot: Appeal Link

Although the appeals in these cases have gone unheeded, in the following instance
the editor himself is addressing the personal query of a commentator:

However the abusive comments by this same commentator escape the moderators
hammer.
It is an unfair world out there and FP is no exception. :(

Here is an example of a decent comment being snapped without a trace :

In the following screen shot the comment by @Firangi_paani is not published:

It is to be noted that on the same forums where this abusive commentator TB is spewing his
filth generously some comments have come under the knife and deleted. Interestingly

several abusive comments which were a direct reply to the deleted ones have been spared.
What can be the reasoning behind this selective moderation?

These observations leads one to conclude that at FP some participants are privileged and
enjoy special status while others have to toe the line with no guarantee of fair treatment.
This sadly is not the only infringement of the concerned authority entrusted with the
moderation of the comment section. The following indulgence of FP moderators which may
or may not be illegal but is certainly a misdemeanor on moral grounds as it leaves the
readers who actively participate in debates and discussions prone to victimization if they
have a different opinion than the moderators.

In the following instance the FP moderator is seen up-voting a proBJP comment.

Does this not give credibility to allegiance with troll theory?

When it is a case of one instance, benefit of doubt can be given citing reasons like technical
snag or even a mistaken click of mouse button. But can this be justified in case of 19
instances as encountered in the following link? : 19 technical faults?

Like they say Once Is Chance, Twice is Coincidence, Third Time Is a Pattern.

The following instance shows a bias against their own staff member. . A solace for the
readers however that they are not the only targets of FP moderators.:)

Glimpse of office politics of FP :

Link : FP Office Politics

Intriguingly FP mods are not merely satisfied with participating in voting but also are
commenting laying bare their political bias.

The commnet of FP editors is deleted. :)

Link: Saboot Gayab

Saiyan bhaye kotwal to darr kahe ka is aptly applicable in this situation. No wonder the
worthy commentator TB was allowed a free ride as he was targeting everyone who was not
a Namobhakt.

SUMMARY:
Even if the concerned authorities come up with some lame excuse for this and hide behind
some technical reasoning, the fact that the moderators completely ignored the vulgar posts
of TB and indulged in selective application of their moderation policy gives credibility to the
theory expounded by many commentators time and again that FP is indeed a ModiPost.
In the words of Benjamin Franklin

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

The silence of the moderators with respect to TB is screaming the truth loud and clear about
troll allegiance.

After all as Plato said:

I shall assume that your silence gives consent.

Or as Sherlock Holmes would have said :

It is elementary my dear Watson the dog didn't bark at night!

*********************************************************************************
END OF PART 1

Part 2 :-

Are the volunteers of Modi working both

online and offline paid?
This is research project done in public interest. BJP whole promotion on social media
is based on lies,hatred, character assassination of opponents,and hypocrisy.
I have encountered the notoriously fake photos that can incite riots, I have seen their
fake videos with wrong headlines of killing people doing rounds on social media
during muzzfarnagar riots, they will represent a pic of other country as Muslims
killing Hindus or blah blah.
The only thing you require to become a IT campaigner of BJP is that you should
know Photoshopping. Most of the BJP related pages share a fake,false, malafied
news.
Check the blog
THE STRUCTURE AND STRATEGY OF TROLL ARMY AT FP: Creating an Illusion
Of Mass Support Base
and This page is to expose Modi/BJP Social Media teams lies & Propaganda!
Fekubook
Just check their business of up-voting and down-voting on news paper comments
and popular news FB pages.
THE STRUCTURE AND STRATEGY OF TROLL ARMY AT
FP(http://www.firstpost.com/): Creating an Illusion Of Mass Support Base
The abusive troll fest which was in full swing during the summer came to an abrupt
end bringing momentary respite for readers seeking meaningful discussion on
current political happenings in the country.
A commentator named TrollFixer gate crashed into this sinful soiree with some
insightful revelations of the troll army and driving away the abusive troll named TB.
An analysis of up voters, main commentators, their followers and their following list
gives the impression of an organized Troll Army at work to create a false impression

of massive support for Modi.

There are three levels of trolls assigned with a specific role.
(A) - Level 0 - si91 at the center. The Ring Leader. Comments as well as Up votes.
Votes the most abusive comments. Has voted most of the comments of TB.
(B) - Level 1 These are the main interfaces.They comment regularly.Their
comments reflect
extreme right winged ideology.They are highly aggressive, intolerant and abusive of
any
opposing opinion.
Examples: Mithram, aamabdul, Pagal Programmer, Jatayu, Akash,
Satyam,Comment Shark, tninety, Sanatan Dharma, Vinay Shekhar etc. They are
invariably connected to si91 through following or as followers. They are also
connected to level 2 Ids through si91.
(C) - Level 2 Most of these have no comment history. They however are seen
Upvoting abusive and pro-Modi comments. It seems like these are just operational
IDs for the purpose of UP Voting and Down voting.
Here is a list of some of the Level 1 and 2 Ids and their number of
comments/following/followers data:
Sunny 0/0/0, Vicky 56/1/0, aniruddh c 3/0/0, bhavesh somani 3/0/0, vivek b
6/0/0, vikas 4/0/0, ashwin kumar 0/0/0, ravikant_s 0/0/0 akshay verma Nick
0/0/0 Vegeta 5/0/0Anuj T - 0/0/0
Sanjeev G - 2/0/0 NamoForPM - **85/2/1 Mitesh - 8/1/3 Ashwin Kumar - 0/0/0
RavikanS - 0/0/0
Hari Mehta - 1/0/0 D4mn 24/0/0 Raghu 1/0/0
To check connection to si91, a few Id's were picked randomly:
Prithviraj 23/1/0, Follower si91; Pragmatic Utopian 61/2/0, Follower si91
CommentShark184/2/0,Follower si91;
Akshay 5/0/1, Following si91
Nick 7/1/0, Follower si91; Tninety 579/1/0 Follower si91
Indian Desi 48/2/0 Follower si91; Finics 68/2/2, Follower si91
Akshay 5/0/1, Following si91; Indian_NaMo 3/1/0, Following si91
Cmewar 12/1/3 Follower si91, Following Satyam Sharma, Akash Mukherjee, Vinay
Shekhar
Vinay Shekhar 206/2/0 Followers, si91, cmewar ; Ravi 3/1/0 Follower si91

Akshay 5/0/1, Following si91; Ravi 3/1/0, Follower si91; NaMoForPM 85/2/1,
Follower si91
It is hard to miss the si91 connection, leading to the conclusion that he indeed is the
ringleader of this group or the main operator of the group of Ids.
Following screen shot shows the connection of highly active Level 1 Trolls to si91

MODUS OPERANDI OF THE TROLL ARMY

The main aim of this troll army is to show massive support for Modi in the online
community.
To achieve this they mainly indulge in the following tactics:
1) Up vote en masse
2) Down vote en masse
3) Post proModi comments en masse
Besides this they troll anyone who has a different point of view or specifically, is not
pro Modi, with abuses and personal attacks. The aim is to discourage users who are
not Modifanboys from commenting at FP, thus creating an impression of hundred
percent support for their idol.
Also they try to raise issues tangentially in order to manipulate the discussion in a
certain direction or obfuscate the issue at hand.And of course lies, half truths and
propaganda reeks through most of their comments.
To confirm the same, one can always visit any article and analyze the comment
section for up voting, down voting and nature of comments.
Almost without exceptions the pro-Modi comments are large in numbers. This need
not necessarily mean that actual users are posting or participating in discussion. In
all likelihood there are just a few users at any given time of the day who are operating
different ids to vote as well as comment.
GHOST IDS

Previously when the up voters were not visible, a ghost army was at work to up vote
proModi comments and down vote all anti Modi comments. Basically these are ids of
the kind C4Q, W7DL272, CM782SN8S10. These have no comment history and no
following and followers list. These can be best described as use and throw
Ids created for the sole purpose of up voting and down voting or specifically for
down voting as one needs a Disqus id for the same and cannot down vote as guest.
In this particular screenshot as one can observe the comment has been up voted 92
times using such ghost ids.

Forty three ghost ids voting the following comment. In all probability these same
Ids have been used to down vote their perceived opponents comments as many as
100 times and more.

These ghost supporters can be seen in action here: Ghosts Who Vote
UPVOTE/DOWNVOTE SCORES : More Upvotes Equal to electoral
votes?
The trolls seem to be under the delusion that more up votes in the comment section
will fetch more votes for their idol in the elections. The way they diligently up vote all
their mates/ids and similarly down vote their presumed opponents, one is forced to
conclude that they have absolute faith in their own dogma.

Ever wondered why you get so many negative ratings for your comments?Retorts a
level 1 operative in
the above instance.
HIGH DOWN-VOTES = NO VISA TO COMMENT?
As per the troll rule book high Down Votes is a dis-qualifier for a commentator and it
automatically makes him/her eligible for filthy abuses, bullying and is a NO ENTRY
ticket to FP.

Commentators @Firangi_paani and @manohar_T have been consistently facing

this kind of harassment.
They have been mocked and abused for their low UPvote score.The discussion points
raised by them are however completely ignored.
Needless to say the following words of Samuel Butler will trickle like water
through sieve in case of these fan boys.
It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in
controversy - but he who has shown the better temper.
MATCHING SEQUENCES: Many ids one user
In many cases there is an exact sequence of voters in more than one instance. This
leads one to infer that possibly the ids were operated by a single person.

Another example of an exact matching sequence from a different article:

Following is some of the High UPvotes sampled randomly from sample source . Not
all of them are exact matches but same pool of ids are functioning and show a

somewhat similar sequence.

In the above data UPVOTE3 and UPVOTE5 are an exact match. UPVOTE4 is also
mirror image to these voting sequence except voters @Sanatan Dharma and
@Brijesh Kumar got added as outside voters.
Similarly in case of UPVOTE6 @Surya Hegde is an added ID that is used.
In the following data (sample source) there is no exact match but again the same set
of IDs are used and also one or two addition or deletion of IDs gives an exact
pattern. For Example UPV 8 and UPV 9 could be an exact match except for the added
ID @Akash in UPV 9.

Several such matching sequences were found here: Matching Sequences

Two such matching sequences are as follows:
Matching Sequence 1

Matching Sequence 2

Note: The guest vote is always at the bottom, while in case of Id's, the first voter sits
at the bottom of the sequence. ** SD refers to ID Sanatan Dharma in devnagri lipi.
This kind of pattern is mostly observed in AAP party related articles as the trolls
agenda on these forums is to mainly spam. Mostly one or two, at the most three trolls
are active here copy pasting abuses of filthiest kind and standard propaganda
material (branding AAP as naxalites, leftists, commies, anti capitalism, BJP vote
cutter etc) and Down voting and Up voting.
The good Samaritan TrollFixerdealt a massive blow to the trolls. He not only
demolishedTB but also forced the trolls to change their strategy. For some time since
then there was a heavy reduction in down voting of their perceived opponents
comments. However up voting was active albeit with a different set of IDs and as
Guest voters.
Abuses in the form of 'desi galiyans' trickled down but were replaced by religious
fundamentalist comments with si91 in the lead.
There is also a consistently sly attempt to play the "ulta chor kotwal ko dante" trick
against their perceived rivals specifically AAP supporters branding them as abusive
and intolerant.

If you can't beat them malign them seems to be their strategy.

As the elections approach the troll army is bound to swell in numbers and so will
their aggressive/abusive posts. With an inkling of these trolls getting support from
within FP there is little hope for a meaningful and objective discussion to prevail on
the forum.
Also the apprehension that the moderators will not hesitate to impose autocratic
policies against genuine commentators is a lurking reality.
This amounts to total hijack of freedom of expression of the common citizens by the
very fourth pillar entrusted with guarding it. When the concerned authorities within
the system itself indulge in gagging and manipulative techniques, hope for revival of
democratic values is doused in the most shocking manner.
The wide spreading apprehension that free and fair media is a myth has begun to
appear like reality!