This entry was posted on
Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 at
1:38 pm and is filed
under The Political Weblog Movement.

Dizzy is a clever guy and he does excellent forensic work, but when he gets that partisan bit between his teeth, a distinct clenching of the brain becomes apparent.

Oh, and he’s just outed himself as a user and abuser of sock-puppets.

I make no apologies for length…

The Background

In 2006, while running a forensic investigation into the websites of David Taylor, I bumped into Dizzy, who was running a parallel investigation that had hit new and exciting ground.

It just so happens that it was this story that Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes) spiked because it was about an informant… as he privately dished the dirt on that same informant (and before you think it, at this stage there is no sign that Dizzy benefited from a similar ‘off the record’ briefing).

The ‘spiked story’ issue was just one of twelve in this mid-January ‘plonker’ post about Guido.

Now, while it struggled to deal with anything beyond the opening charges (of comment censorship and sock-puppetry) Dizzy’s reaction to the ‘plonker’ post did bring up the valid point that was worth discussing… and you can see me discussing this with an imaginatively-named ‘sock-puppet’ right here. We’ll come back to that sock-puppet later. For now, let’s stick with the timeline…

Despite his ‘concerns’ about an impending flame-war, it didn’t take Dizzy long to resort to name-calling and veiled threats (see comments under this post).

A few days later, Dizzy had a bit of difficultly with an awkward question, as did the author of Out From Under.

These two exchanges were recently featured on Bloggerheads when Praguetory faced similar difficulty with more or less the same question. A related post was added to Guido 2.0 about the final fate of the Out From Under website (it was hijacked by a blog-spammer pushing gay porn).

It was under the latter post that Dizzy unleashed his mighty fury.

NOTE – This exchange went from comments to email at one stage, and Dizzy has refused to allow me to publish the contents of the relevant emails. Please excuse me in places where I need to fill the blanks with a generic impression of what has passed.

The Accusations

Dizzy started out by trying to talk me into a corner on porn, but only really found his groove when the word ‘spam’ was used. For the newcomers, it needs to be highlighted that Manic/’Guido 2.0′ is your humble author (a prominent link on the Guido 2.0 microsite makes this clear). Oh, and the highlights (in bold) are mine:

Guido 2.0 (Monday, March 12, 2007): One of our sock-puppets is missing!

dizzy said…

Are you saying that you have a problem with gay porn?

–

Guido 2.0 said…

Dizzy, please read posts before commenting on them:

“Manic thinks it is pretty clear how such a thing could be capitalised on with a little misdirection.”

This is a clear statement of concern about how such a thing could be used… if, for example, one were a partisan hypocrite.

PS – Are you saying you have no problem with spam?

–

dizzy said…

A clear as mud.

As to spam, I hate it, spam and anyone who engages in email related denial of service attacks are scum of the earth. But then I work in the industry and have to deal with, and fix the mess that they cause.

Of course you know all about that sort of mess given you have, in the past, openly encouraged a Denial of Service attack on someones mailbox and then boasted about it with much merriment when it started bouncing mail because it was full.

–

Guido 2.0 said…

Link please.

–

dizzy said…

Lazy cunt. You wrote it, find it yourself.

–

Guido 2.0 said…

You cited it, you produce it.

–

dizzy said…

Why should I, you and I know exactly where it is and what you said. You’re work in SEO, you are a professional spammer, you openly boasted on Bloggerheads about how people should let their comments be knwon and then boasted about how someone’s mailbox was full.

Luckily you’re not relaying mail yourself in these games so you’re bnot breaking NTL’s abuse policy, but you could be considered to be breaking Fasthosts.

Incidentally I’m only posting comments because I think it’s fucking hilarious that who works in professional manipulation of online marketing would have the barefaced cheek to talk about spam being wrong.

–

dizzy said…

lots of shit typos there from me.

–

Guido 2.0 said…

Well, now we’re getting waaaay off-topic, but it’s illuminating so:

1. You brought it up. Bring forth a link.

2. I struggle to see how what I do can be considered spam. Real people voluntarily support a page/site and its performance improves in search engines as a result.

–

dizzy said…

Not off-tiopic at all. You started a thread about spamming and search engine manipulation. That’s the exact part of the industry you work in.

1: Fuck off. You can prove the negative instead. If it’s good for you to use as an argument then its good for me to use it at you in reverse.

2: Utter bollocks and you fucking well know it. SEO is anything but voluntary, it’s based on cynical manipulation which is why it’s such a competetive and lucrative market.

–

Guido 2.0 said…

“That’s the exact part of the industry you work in”

Oh, fuck off yourself. And take your extra-wide smearing brush with you.

You made the claim. Produce the evidence and we can take it from there.

–

dizzy said…

Oooooh touchy! Doesn’t take much to get you in a tizzy does it? Don’t worry I’m fucking off now, I have grown bored of you anyway.

[snip]

Citizen Andreas said…

I believe that this is the offending post to which Dizzy refers.

–

Guido 2.0 said…

OK, let’s check with Dizzy.

Dizzy, is this the post you were talking about?

(cc email)

[snip]

Here is where the email exchange took place. I sent a link by email and asked Dizzy… erm, if this was the post he was talking about.

Dizzy confirmed that it was.

Dizzy was then invited back to the thread so we might discuss the accusation(s) he made. He declined the invitation by claiming to be too bored, too important etc.

I politely declared a win by forfeit… and that’s about the time at which Dizzy lost the plot.

*****************************************************************************************************************
I am now an un-person to Dizzy. He claims to have added my primary domain name to his anti-spam filter… oh, and a few other distributed blacklists besides.

*****************************************************************************************************************

Nice.

That wouldn’t count as any kind of DOS attack, now would it?

The intention appears to be to not only block emails from me, but ensure that others do as well.. possibly unwittingly.

This wouldn’t count as any kind of gaming a system based on trust and reputation, now would it?

[Sidebar: In an unconnected development, this morning I appear to be batting away twenty times the amount of spam I usually receive on a weekday.]

How does Dizzy justify this response?

Well, he basically says that he hates me. Because I’m a spammer. Just that and that alone. Nothing to do with my political views or my less-than-high-regard for one of his web-chums, then.

Good to know. With that we can move on.

The next morning arrived to show that, while Dizzy may have no problems blocking any email response from me, he certainly doesn’t have a problem with leaving feedback on my website. Back into the thread we go….

Guido 2.0 (Monday, March 12, 2007): One of our sock-puppets is missing! [contd.]

Yog Brother said…

Manic, you’ve made the mistake in thinking Dizzy might be different from Iain Dale or Guido or Praguetory when in fact he’s using the same playbook.

Namely, if lacking the intellectual muscle or courage of your convictions to front up to an argument, simply shut down the debate or refuse to engage on any terms other than your own. Or delete the comments. Or, of course, reach for your lawyer.

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dizzy said…

Justin, there is no argument to “front up”, I made it already. Tim Ireland engages in professional legalised spamming. In this case though, he went a step further by actively encouraging and then taking pleasure in seeing someone’s mailbox fill up.

No matter which way you dress it up, that is a Denial of Service Attack. Service was denied as a result of his actions, which he then made merriment of.

Now I have to go and write code and fix a number of mail servers that have been fucked up by people in the same industry that Tim works in. Can you sense the professional antipathy I have against the activities of people of his ilk?

–

Justin said…

Dizzy, I wonder how strong this ‘professional’ antipathy would be if it were Iain Dale or Guido fucking up your servers. Both are masters of the unsolicited email – sorry – spam. I could cite you chapter and verse having been on the receiving end of many from both of them before I was regarded as no longer useful to either.

State your case in black and white if you don’t want it to be regarded as partisan smears and sock-puppetry. You look like you’re peddling nasty innuendos, like some party political hack. Go on, show us you can think and act for yourself.

Or maybe you don’t care. You should try politics professionally, mate.
–

dizzy said…

If I discovered Iain or Guido were fucking servers up with spamming I would be equally as vocal. Especially if they were my fucking servers. And anyway, spam is far greater than just email these days, as this very post is trying to point out.

I have stated my case in black and white though. Tim Ireland encouraged and then laughed at a Denial of Service incident against someones mailbox. It’s pretty bloody straight forward even for someone with only an elementary understanding of the inter-networking. It’s not like you have understand frame relay and ATM switching to get it for christ sake.

I also fail to see how stating, in plain and simple terms, that I consider Ireland a legalised spammer and cynical manipulator of the web is an “innuendo” either. Just because you say it is an innuendo doesn’t make it so you know. It’s pretty plain and fucking simple really if you engage your brain and listen to what I am saying.

I consider the industry in which Tim Ireland works to be the scourge and scum of the Internet. They’re all wankers who waste bandwidth and think there is nothing wrong with what they do.

As for acting for myself, what the fuck do you think I am doing right this minute? Working for Iain and Guido?

What you have to realise is that when it comes to the industry in which Tim works I really do just hate them. What’s more, when I see one of them start banging on about how “spam is bad mmkay” I’m not going to sit by and say nothing.

Anyhow, why on earth would I want to try professional politics? It pays shit and I don’t get to code and fuck around with stupidly expensive and powerful machines. Give me an 8-way Sparc core, or 16x * dual core AMD64 and I’m in fucking heaven…. mate.

–

Guido 2.0 said…

Going to ask you to pull up *right* there, gents.

Manic asks this only so he can finish a related post before addressing this matter.

And so, here we are:

My Response to the Accusations

1. Apparently, this, ‘no matter which way you dress it up’, is a Denial of Service Attack.

Dizzy hates people who do this kind of thing. It’s not a political affair, it’s pure professional antipathy at work.

2. Also, the way I conduct myself as an SEO consultant is not a ‘black-hat vs. white-hat’, discussion… Dizzy regards the entire industry to be involved in what he describes as ‘professional legalised spamming’.

Dizzy hates people who do this kind of thing. It’s not a political affair, it’s pure professional antipathy at work.

1. ‘Denial of Service’ attack

I refute this accusation outright. Dizzy tries to back-pedal a *bit* in his later comments, but throughout he’s stuck to more or less this same line; “you openly encouraged a Denial of Service attack on someones mailbox and then boasted about it with much merriment when it started bouncing mail because it was full.”

Let’s have a look at the post he’s talking about:

Bloggerheads (February 1, 2007): Barefaced cheek

I’ve said my piece under comments. I encourage you to do the same.

UPDATE – Well, that didn’t take long:

[jesse.norman@dial.pipex.com]: maildir delivery failed: This customer’s mailbox is full.

UPDATE (2 Feb) – Oh, I’m loving this: Some Conservatives do wish to comment. One has done so right here while simultaneously proclaiming that “the Conservatives do not wish to comment”. That might be a tiny bit ill-advised.

I thought that what Jesse Norman published at Comment Is Free was totally outrageous, but to keep things on an even keel, here I’m going to describe it as ‘controversial’…

What Jesse Norman published at Comment Is Free invited comment. Because it was controversial.

I encouraged comments on what is quite possibly the most active of interactive sites in this country. I regarded it as unlikely that the traffic I would send their way would collapse their servers.

I did not encourage the sending of emails to the author or even suggest that anyone send an email. I did go to the trouble of locating his website and sending an email myself, though.. I sent Jesse a link to my comment.

I then published the resulting ‘bounce’ message as a clear indication of how… controversial Jesse Norman’s article was.

Admittedly there’s some allowance for interpretation here… so I stand ready to be called on this if anyone else wants to speak up.

Me, I’m not seeing the gleeful DOS attack that Dizzy describes.

I do see one here, though; Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes) calling for a pile-on and shutting down Miliband’s wiki as a result. Did Dizzy voice a professional objection? No, he joined the pile-on… ‘then boasted about it with much merriment’ when the site was closed as a result.

2. Spamming

Dizzy’s claim that all SEO is ‘professional legalised spamming’ seems to be based more on prejudice than logic.

In its purest form, SEO is about ensuring that you have the right level of indexability, relevance and reputation. You can do this by improving site accessibility, bringing relevance to the fore though good design and copy management, and generating valid voluntary links/support from directories and the general web community… or, you can waste a fuck of a lot of time trying to keep up with every new algorithm change designed to defeat your attempts to cheat or beat the system.

I choose the former method, which explains why I have the time to write long posts like this.

:o)

So, onto Dizzy and his objection to spam (in all its forms, both real and imagined).

It needs to be pointed out that Dizzy has made it clear that he would speak out about spam from his web-chums… but only under certain conditions. He said: “If I discovered Iain or Guido were fucking servers up with spamming I would be equally as vocal.”

So my pointing out that Iain Dale is guilty of outright spamming does me little good here, as I have no proof that he collapsed any servers in the process.

Do I dare to call ‘impasse’? Or is that being just a tad generous?

Sock-Puppetry

Dizzy had the following to say when I suggested that a number of sock-puppets were on the loose over at the Guido Fawkes weblog:

Dizzy Thinks (Tuesday, January 16, 2007): Usenet, Bulletin Board and Blogs. All the same really.

Fundamental to the diatribe and ensuing flame war (of which yes, this may be considered part), is an edge of paranoia that thinks all is not what it seems. There will be a belief that vast numbers of the “other side” are not really individuals but merely alts of the original target. The intellectual absurdity then becomes present as the paranoia leads to fallacious arguments such as “unless you prove you’re not an alt I will believe you are one”.

One can only wonder why I’m so paranoid.

Oh, here’s why…

Dizzy himself was one of the fucking sock-puppets!

Check out a master-class in sock-puppetry in the comments of Paul Linford’s website starting here.

Dizzy begins by posting under his own name, then retreats and begins posting as ‘sock-puppet’ (original name).

Dizzy, posting as ‘sock puppet’ , displays a fair few tells throughout, but he totally gives himself away riiiiight about here:

You’re no better than a 419 scumbag spammer. Then again, you are in SEO/marketing, which is a euphemism for the “spam department”.

Whoops.

Dizzy’s prejudice is showing.

:o)

Later in the exchange, Dizzy appears as himself again to mop up and explain away an earlier veiled threat. He gives no indication that he and ‘sock puppet’ are one and the same. Posting as ‘sock puppet’, he is even asked about his identity… and refuses to reveal it. The intention to post as an ‘alt’ (i.e. a sock puppet) is clear.

Dizzy is right when he claims that I engaged in some sock-puppetry myself.. I spent a great deal of time using sock-puppets on Guido’s site while investigating his use and abuse… of sock-puppetry. You can see one of the lessons learned as a result here.

But I made no secret of that – and I certainly didn’t go into a comments thread to bat for myself or any of my friends while posing as a neutral observer – which is exactly what Dizzy did here…. the sad bastard.

Conclusions

– Dizzy’s shrill accusations are easy to refute… and one of them deserves to be ignored.

– Just like Jackie Danicki, Dizzy likes to make baseless accusations and run away when they are challenged.

– Dizzy is just a little bit of a hypocrite.

– Dizzy uses sock-puppets.

– How many sock-puppets Dizzy uses to defend himself or ‘Guido’ and/or rubbish/bully opponents remains a matter for debate.

Over to Dizzy

When you’re ready, Dizzy.

Hope you don’t mind conducting the rest of this exchange here where only registered users are allowed to play. Email is out, obviously.. and given your proven history of sock-puppetry, I’d like to be certain of who I’m talking to.