Several months ago, like many of you, I started to become concerned about
this endless stream of mindless incessant bullying, name calling and
threats of retaliation by this Zeke Krahlin character.
For the life of me I couldn't fathom why someone from the bay area would
have such an interest in demeaning people and local organizations that
communicate via our little podunk list serve.
My concern was great enough that I started confronting this character in my
own fashion. I got the standard responses along with one that showed my
name and business interests. Shortly thereafter I found myself, unwittingly
signed up to a few wing nut email lists. The price of free speech these
days, I suppose.
In any case I decided to look at a few list serves in other communities to
see if this sort of thing occurs. It's actually pretty common. What was
most interesting though was the similarity in the verbal attacks and
degrading comments.
A simple web search brings up a variety of Zeke Krahlin posts and responses
from dark web topics, hacking, virus' and this characters opinions on a
variety of tech topics and him/itself in both the Windows and Linux world.
My simple searches led me to consider the probability that the Zeke
(Ezekiel) Krahlin character is not a person at all but a phishing bot
designed to get emotionally charged responses and compile information.
In these troubled times of psycho-political warfare, where information
about people is the main currency, bots like Krahlin are invaluable for
collecting information and discouraging activist types of people. The
irritating posts and calloused responses to simple community events and the
needs of individuals on the list serve are designed to bring out agitated
responses and feed the algorithms of the application to better identify the
character of those responding to the bot.
The information gathered is then stored and used as needed against the
individuals or groups of individuals that unknowingly give the bot
psychological and or personal information about themselves.
This type of phishing is far more insidious than even the recent Facebook
information phishing schemes because it is on a more personal level. One
believes they are arguing a valid point or standing up for a perceived
injustice against themselves or friends, when in reality they are only
feeding a bot with ulterior motives.
Whether you believe my analysis or not I would suggest that you not
interact with this (character?).
Feel free to re post.
update 3 Dec 2018:
This post has been getting some comments (unusual for my blog), including from Zeke (its/himself!) so I really want to advise against replying to him. If you feel oddly outraged, that's the whole point, it's really nothing personal though, just business.
Inger Grape says "He's a classic troll, who most likely gets paid per reply, and to garner
replies, they act in a disruptive, vile manner. So please don't reply to
him. Nobody but nobody spends that much time answering just about *every
single email *without getting paid."
update 21 oct 2020:
This link describes a possible function and purpose of the Zeke: Where loneliness can lead (Aeon.com).
An onslaught of mindless lies might cause one to consider the validity of the lies as a means to understand, cracking the door open to their influence. "Verlassenheit – a state of being abandoned [is] an introduction to totalitarianism, in loneliness (alieanation) we are unable to realise our full capacity for action as human beings" and "destroys man’s ability to think, while turning each in his lonely isolation against all others". (Legit. Hannah Arendt)
Also a short history of classic brain washing.
Update 22 Dec 2023:
"Due to the ability of AI to not only impersonate humans undetectably in digital spaces, but also to expertly push human emotional buttons to change behaviors, my top priority, as a democracy enjoying former email administrator, is for a more protected community list by this rule: You must be an actual human with local ties.
mailmodo.com/guides/ai-email-responder
For this software, a real person would have to sign up and then hand it off to a bot installed which interacts with their email program. Then, for example, key word filters might only respond in certain cases. In addition to what you can buy, there are also custom programmed systems without the restrictions consumer AI has. Corporate entities can use this, for example, to create robot call centers that apply pressure to anyone the AI determines is saying anything on social media or on lists which could negatively impact one of their products.
Worse is that such AI pressure can use very specific and sometimes very private facts gleaned by and deduced from decades of mass data collection on every person.
Weather or not AI tools creating some fake dramatic people are behind the near takedown of this list is irrelevant; the point is that it should never happen, and it technically some see that it can. I think it will, if it hasn’t already.
A simple solution I propose is to verify the humanity of any account doing emotive tagging, pushing emotional buttons.
People will always disagree and argue and unskilled communication can escalate tensions, same as ever, but AI is bringing a new level of threat that humans have never seen.
An AI wrote this:
“We will have great companies that will bring us wealth, but when AI takes over, it will all be stealth.”
Are we there yet? Hope not. Lets patch the fences before robotic deer get in to eat our gardens.
Respectfully,
Xeno"
4 comments:
Ha, ha, you deleted all comments. Poor baby.
- Zeke
hi
I spent a lot of time trying to get some human response from Z. but never succeeded.
Since I have blocked him, life has improved. This was very interesting. Thanks for your
effort.
Another likely troll-bot entity on the MCN listservs is the newly appeared Nick W who is a rabidly anti-vax conspiracist, and repeatedly posts memes like "the experimental vaccine," and insists COVID is not a serious concern because most people survive it. He also calls it the Trump vaccine in an apparent effort to credit Trump for it.
When I challenged him on his claims he responded with personal attacks, calling me overweight, bald and suffering from low testosterone. When challenged to reveal his last name, he evades and deflects, saying things like "I've stated my name many times in my posts." But he has been posting to the list for only 5 days, and I checked all 30+ of his posts and found he never gave his name. He claims he lives in Fort Bragg. He posted to someone else on the list that he won't give his name and location because Nicholas Wilson might send someone to harm him.
One thing that galls me in particular is that I'm a 50+ year resident of this area named Nick Wilson, and even people who know better have falsely assumed that this Nick W character is me. I've had to post disclaimers stating that Nick W is NOT Nick Wilson. So this thing is affecting me and my reputation directly. I fully support vaccination and public health measures to defeat the COVID virus and the Delta variant.
Thanks for your post about the Zeke thing, whatever it is. I think Z is a human with serious mental issues and compulsions, and who has nothing else to do but monitor and post on our local listserv. That's why it replies to every post.
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