Part 1 of 7
In continuation of the last submission, regarding the list of 20+ connected domains that spread fake news, I looked further into the characteristics of those domains and those submitters on Voat. I am not sure what to expect with this submission, other than presenting my findings and voice my opinions with the data I have collected at hand. You may notice that the archive dates are spread out across a whole week, that is because it was done in bits and pieces.
Notice that this data may be incomplete, as most of the 20+ domains were already offline or wiped, shortly after the last submission. Because of the number of domains involved, I made minimal effort to archive those sites. Lately, I had to resort to the timestamps from the search engine.
tl;dr: a collection of domains, controlled by a small group of users, could be used to spread fake news, bypass spam rule, or track and dox other users. Use vpn, tor, or anon proxies when possible, especially for high profile users.
Let's start by defining the metrics used to flag a domain, along with the submitters. A domain is flagged as suspicious, along with the users involved, if it exhibits one or a combination of the following characteristics:
- First submission to Voat being too close to domain's registration date: This strongly suggests that the submitter is directly or indirectly affiliated with the domain involved. This submitter either owns the domain or pushes the domain for its owner.
- Low traffic site recently been updated, closely followed by a submission to Voat: This suggests a weak but similar condition as #1.
- Site's wayback activity sparsely archived, with submission too close to the archived date: It suggests that the site showed some recent activity.
- Site's traffic history, followed too closely to the submission date: When a low traffic or barely active site made a submission on Voat, its traffic increases, followed by its decline back to zero or low traffic steady state.
- Multiple domains sharing the same set of IPs: Sharing IPs is common in shared hosting, but having those domains coincidentally showed up by a user or a small group of users, is not so common. This technique was probably used to circumvent Voat's spam rule, or possibly to disguise something else, such as repackaging of MSM news behind no-name domains.
Status of domains been investigated:
- Domain1 akniinfo.com, taken offline, short-lived.
- Domain2 cbinfo24.com, taken offline, short-lived.
- Domain3 coolinfo24.com, taken offline, short-lived.
- Domain4 cukam.com, taken offline, short-lived.
- Domain5 cvikas.com, taken offline, short-lived.
- Domain6 cvikasdrv.com, taken offline, short-lived.
- Domain7 dailyinfo24.info, re-purposed, but traffic continued.
- Domain8 fergieinfo.com, taken offline, short-lived.
- Domain9 lifeinfo24.net, taken offline, short-lived.
- Domain10 ludinfo24.com, taken offline, short-lived. First submission made 3 days after domain registration.
- Domain11: mminfo24.com, taken offline, short-lived.
- Domain12: policeglobal.com, still online on 2019-01-19.
- Domain13: scandallinfo.com, online but data wiped, short-lived. First submission made only 12 hours after domain registration, very interesting!
- Domain14: tapainfo.com, taken offline, short-lived. First submission made 4 days after domain registration.
- Domain15: thenyherald.com, taken offline, short-lived. First submission made only 2.5 days after domain registration.
- Domain16: tvrtinfo.com, taken offline, short-lived.
- Domain17: usapatriotsvoice.com, taken offline on 2019-01-21.
- Domain18: vtamedia.com, taken offline on 2019-01-21.
- Domain19: classic2017.info, taken offline.
- Domain20: ilovemyamerica.net, suspended.
- Domain21 libertyinfonews.com, still online, but short-lived. First submission to Voat, 8 days dated from site's earliest article.
This list came from previous submission, where the domains were flagged for sharing a subset of identical articles that contained fake news. These domains also showed very short user engagement, suggesting clickbait nature.
Suspects found, evaluated by timestamps associated with domain registration, wayback archives, and site's traffic profile: Kilroy_1962, RussianIvantheCrazy, GizaDog, Dailytacs, yurisrevenge, nogarbagetrashonly, theoldones, Russianbots, Mogumbo, Sw0rdofDamocles, mattsixteen24, and Kippering. I tried to minimize the number of suspects and usually only flagged the first submitter to the domain.
- Kilroy_1962
- RussianIvantheCrazy
- GizaDog
- Dailytacs
- yurisrevenge
- nogarbagetrashonly
- theoldones
- Russianbots
- Mogumbo
- Sw0rdofDamocles
- mattsixteen24
- Kippering
Looking further into the suspects, I dumped all of the domains from their submission histories. There were 900+ domains, first sorted by domain names, then by IP addresses. As it was too much work to look at them individually, I only picked those domains that seemed unusual, or domains that shared similar names and/or with the same set of IPs. Many of the domains that were picked showed very similar characteristics as the ones that were previously investigated. They were relatively new domains made it to Voat, with a spike in their traffic histories. Some were strikingly clear to see that they were pushed by specific user. In one specific case, three domains were cascaded together, af-mg.com forwarded to dc-chronicle.com, with dc-chronicle.com's data on thenarrativetimes.org. Very interesting to say the least!!
List of domains picked up from suspects' submissions, that showed very similar behaviour to those of 20+ domains. Initial submissions were usually posted to Voat between days to 3 weeks, after domain registration or before traffic spike.
- Domain22: americanews.network, offline, short-lived. First submission posted 10 days from domain registration.
- Domain23: amirror.link, offline with bad gateway. First submission 6 days from domain registration.
- Domain24: animeright.news, currently online, a shitpost website.
- Domain25.1: americafastnews.net, offline, no ssl. Appeared to be 1 of 4 domains sharing same backend, see data log at the end. First submissions posted to Voat within 2 to 3 weeks of domain registration.
- Domain25.2: conservativegeneration.net, offline, no ssl.
- Domain25.3: conservativemind.net, offline, no ssl.
- Domain25.4: topalertnews.com, offline, no ssl.
- Domain26.1: newsusatoday.co, offline, expired. First submission 5 days from site's traffic spike.
- Domain26.2 viraldailynews.co, offline, expired.
- Domain27.1: politicalbelief.site, offline. First submission 12 days from domain registration.
- Domain27.2: trumptroopers.com, offline. First submission 4 days from domain registration.
- Domain27.3: viralview.site, offline.
- Domain28: viralusfortrump.com, offline. First submission 4 days from domain registration.
- Domain29.1: loveconservative.site, offline. First submission 13 days from domain registration.
- Domain29.2: politicaltribes.site, offline.
- Domain30: freedom-daily.com, re-purposed. First submission 21 days from previous domain registration.
- Domain31.1: democratdossier.org, online. First submission between 1 week to 1 month.
- Domain31.2: truthseries.net, online, no ssl. First submission 13 days before traffic spike.
- Domain31.3: yellowvestmarch.com, online. First submission 15 days after domain registration.
- Domain32: nationonenews.com, offline. First submission 7 days after domain registration.
- Domain33: thenarrativetimes.org, online, connected to dc-chronicle.com, which itself was connected to af-mg.com. First submission 11 days before traffic peaked.
- Domain34: nationonenews.org, offline. First submission 1 fucking day after domain registration.
- Domain35.1: dc-chronicle.com, online, redirected from af-mg.com.
- Domain35.2: af-mg.com, connected to dc-chronicle.com.
- Domain36: dailycallernewsfoundation.org, online.
- Domain37: redstatenation.com, online. First submission 8 days after domain registration.
- Domain38: defiantamerica.com, online.
So it appears to me that there is likely a user or a small group of users, who are here to push contents, by hopping through disposable/burner domain names. Some of those domains pushed fake news, some pushed low quality contents or other bullshits. Some would circumvent spam rule with collection of domains at disposal. This is something that other goats can point out periodically. I am not too worried or concerned about that. But I am in a way concerned with its implications.
Cont to part 2: https://voat.co/v/ProtectVoat/3001782/16431060
view the rest of the comments →
kneo24 ago
I'm not sure if these are set up to track and dox users - I don't know. One thing that I think is clear, these sources exist to push narratives (whether they true or not). I suspect Voat has long had an issue of people using multiple accounts to form consensus on narratives. People would love to pretend that is somehow a Reddit only thing, but there is nothing in place to prevent it on Voat, and to be honest, quite a few NPC's here who will upvote anything that conforms to their narrative.
You might have a few false positives in this list, and you might not. I'm going to ping the faggots in question so they can explain themselves. Let's see how many get their panties twisted.
@Kilroy_1962 @RussianIvantheCrazy @GizaDog @Dailytacs @yurisrevenge
MadWorld ago
Thanks!
Some more users from previous submission who may be interested: @GoylentGreen, @theoldones, @Lazmat, @Peaceseeker, @SchwazaRifleCoffeeCo
theoldones ago
am i summoned as some accusation of being an accomplice in this?
MadWorld ago
Your username came up, when I was sorting through those fake news domains. Please see the part where the metrics were used to flag a domain and its submitters. Your name got hit at least twice. One particularly interesting hit was when you made the first submission within 12 hours after domain registration. The data for each domain starts at part 3 of 7.
heygeorge ago
Part of me wonders if these links are boosted elsewhere in order to gain some organic upvotes. I’m curious how @theoldones found and submitted the link within 12 hours of the domain being registered. I have some pet theories, but I’d like to hear from theoldones and some others first.
theoldones ago
suck a running fucking car tailpipe.
heygeorge ago
It appears you don’t wish to answer as to how you came upon this. I find that a bit peculiar. And I don’t know why you are wishing ill on me when all I did was make a non-accusatory statement.
theoldones ago
if your fucking accusing me of some shit, just fucking say it. stop being fucking cryptic and sly
MadWorld ago
So instead of answering to @heygeorge's courteous inquiry, you resolved to cheap insult, asking him to suck a tailpipe? Instead of answering the question, you had to make two submissions [1] [2] and PM me with a reminder? All that walk around the circle is not necessary.
If you did not bother to look through the parts where you were flagged, let me point it out for you.
You made a submission from ludinfo24.com, 15 days after its domain registration. The first hit did not flag your username. That is why it was not in boldface text.
But Domain13 did flag you as a suspect:
You made the first submission to Voat, only 12 hours after the domain registration date! This fits the metric #1, used to flag the domain and its submitters (see part 1 of 7 in the main message body). Then the site's traffic spiked (metric #4). And shortly after my last submission, the data from that website was wiped clean. Coincidence??
After a usersname being flagged as a suspect, I would also include it further down the list, if the dates were closely related. This is also why your name was flagged again on Domain31.3.
Do you still not see why your name was flagged? Do you still want to call all this bullshit? I cannot state enough, that I do not have any sort of grudge against you! I only followed the data, and that is what it took me here.
And if this was not enough, I also have the histogram data of your activity on Voat. Unlike regular users, whose activity histograms will show a reasonable 6 to 10 hour break, your activity histogram is all over the place. This can mean either of two things, that either your account is shared or you do not have regular sleep cycles. I have not look deep enough into this data to make the distinction between the two.
At this point, it should be abundantly clear, that I only followed the data to come to this conclusion.
If you care to explain yourself, please do. I promise, I will come back here to check your update. Thanks!
@heygeorge
theoldones ago
should've used a fucking ping then, you idiot.
am i seriously being asked why i post information that seems interesting?
kneo24 ago
You are being purposely obtuse here at this point.
sguevar ago
I have tried to reason with him already. I give him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't intentionally tried harming voat with desinformation but he still fails to see that he did use suspicious links.
So I wouldn't bother in continuing the matter with him.
Now on your approach @MadWorld, I liked it very much thanks for the compilation of information.
kneo24 ago
One of two things going on at this point, bonafide shill, or someone who refuses to take a step back and calm down to assess the situation, which makes them nigger tier. I say this because I saw the conversations where multiple people took the effort to calmly discuss this with him. In the past, the obvious SCP farmers I (and others) have called out always react in this same manner.
sguevar ago
This > which makes them nigger tier
Cracked me up so much. Well even after his childish behavior he deserves the benefit of the doubt.
Let's see what he does with it.
kneo24 ago
Like you pointed out to him multiple times, his reaction to all of this has made others more suspicious.
sguevar ago
Yeah that is true