Sock puppeteers are people who comment on blogs and elsewhere using more than one assumed name. Alternative identities are usually assumed names too. Their comments are self-complimentary. They indulge in smarmy sycophantic agreement with other socks the same puppeteer uses. While this is totally dishonest it can also be debilitating for other users. Sock puppeteers, like trolls, target individuals, usually individuals who make valid and intelligent contributions to the blog, to try and destroy their self-confidence with a plethora of insults and derogatory attacks. This can be relentless and I have personally witnessed at least one genuine contributor constantly harassed and harangued by these mindless morons until she ceased, at least for a while, to comment on Craig Murray's blog. I too get targeted myself by sock puppeteers and trolls and look on this as a compliment to my own comments being good argument. Like trolls, sock puppeteers are there to disrupt the blog.
From my experience sock-puppeteers support government propaganda and try to reinforce a false image presented through the mainstream media. They live a lie in changing an identity in order to pretend to support other socks who contribute to the blog. Their existence in the blogosphere therefore survives on a diet of lies. You have to ask yourself if somebody who uses deceit in pretending to be something he or she is not can ever be relied upon to tell the truth in their comments. This is unfortunate for other pseudonymous contributors who share similar views to the sock puppeteer because they fall under suspicion too. The sarcastic cartoon above illustrates sock puppetry on Craig Murray's blog but obviously not all these contributors are dishonest and not all are socks or puppeteers.
Honest people are prepared to write under their own names and these people can generally be trusted. That is not to say that a person writing under his or her own name cannot resort to sock-puppetry. A good example of this is the novelist E J Ellory, who assumed several identities to write extremely positive, in fact first-rate reviews, of his own book. Not only that but these same puppets Ellory created commented adversely on the novels of other novelists writing in the same genre. His crime was exposed by fellow-crime novelist Jeremy Duns.
Because sock puppeteers are fakes themselves, with their false identities, comments they make, however reasonable in appearance, can never really be trusted. As with trolls they have a purpose. Sock-puppets and trolls follow a line supportive of the status quo. If anyone makes a statement not in line with MSM propaganda he or she is accused of being a conspiracy theorist. Whether they are doing this from genuine support for the status quo, or whether they are paid by some pressure-group intent on maintaining the status quo, is difficult to gauge. Though we know paid trolling goes on. Nevertheless, as well as being disruptive, rude and inconsiderate these false people have created a hole in the blogosphere that needs to be fixed. So put a sock in it!