Return of the Sock Puppets!

A new spate of sock puppets, this time spitting against animals!

Someone commenting as lowndes county tax payer and resident yelled and screamed a bit, concluding

“DAMN.”
Less than an hour later, long time citizen as well commented:
“I certainly can agree with you on that….”
Guess what? They both posted from the same IP address and supplied the same email address. And then lifetime citizen of lowndes county, not just a visitor complaining posted
“STOP BOTHERING THOSE PEOPLE”
with a different IP address, yet the same email address. You may have suspected that just from the same kind of ALL CAPS INVECTIVE.

This is a sock puppet:

sock puppet: the act of creating a fake online identity to praise, defend or create the illusion of support for one’s self, allies or company. — New York Times

As I pointed out back in April, Sock puppets may not be such a good idea, because:

Sock puppeting can be a fast way to lose political capital.

In a rare post from the LAKE politburo in May, LAKE said:

Everyone has a voice and this forum is an opportunity to have yours heard, if you choose. If you are too ashamed of your opinion to put your name on it, perhaps this forum is not for you. Community building comes from people building relationships and having dialog. We may not all agree, but if light is shined on issues, informed decisions might be made and in building community, fears may be decreased.
That’s what the LAKE blog is for.

LAKE also remarked in that post:

There is a balance between citizen participation when saying things which one believes may be controversial and being protected from retaliation for having those potentially unpopular views. Because retaliation can happen there are times when anonymity is appropriate. If someone were to obtain, and want published, important documents about a local issue, they might choose to remain behind the scenes. This does happen with press sources and could happen here.
But that’s not what’s going on in the comments above. The person who obtained documents and gave them to LAKE for posting is Susan Leavens, who proudly posts under her own name.

So far all the people attacking either Ms. Leavens or her evidence are commenting anonymously, including the above-cited sockpuppets. Where are their documents? What laws can they point to? None so far.

So on the one hand we have quite a few people willing to sign their names to blog comments, to file complaints with the county and the state, to supply copious evidence for their points, and to speak in public County Commission meetings at the risk of being fired or arrested.

While on the other hand against those brave people we have on the blog only anonymous commenters. There aren’t nearly as many of even those as it might seem, since half of them are sock puppets.

I know which side sounds more credible to me, and it’s not that of the sock puppets.

-jsq

3 thoughts on “Return of the Sock Puppets!”

  1. curious bystander

    Ms Leavens has been heard stating multiple times that she is WELL aware of the whistle blowers law and knows the county would never fire her, there is no risk to her of losing her job, others may not be as so well protected

  2. Susan Leavens

    whisle blowers laws apply to everyone, just because i brought this information forward does not mean everyone else would be fired for telling the truth, and I would rather tell the truth even knowing i could loose my job. I went into this knowing that was possible.. Those who choose to deny or lie… In the end Ionly have to answer to God.

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