Catching a Salmon

[davidn]

Projected phases of the virtual cluster

A while ago I talked about a strange social experiment dubbed "Salmoning" that had started happening to me and several other people on Livejournal. Since then it seems to have become more widespread, with the themissinghat community growing by the day with reports of people's conversations with the strange message-relaying automaton. It's happened to me again a few times since that entry, but it was never anything remarkable - either the other party didn't say anything at all or just acted confused before signing off, much like I did the first few times it happened. But a couple of days ago, I actually found someone who knew about the whole thing and we had a coherent conversation - something rather difficult to get hold of on a surprising amount of the Internet even if there isn't a middleman in the way.

Previously I'd tried to explain this to people I was randomly connected to but failed miserably with them running away rather quickly after the conversation started. As it targets AIM users I first just assumed that this was a natural case of being slow on the uptake caused by direct association with AOL, but once we had switched to nanocommunication (actually, just finding out each other's real usernames and talked directly), we managed to trade the first few lines of what we thought each other had said through the bot - and the results are rather interesting to compare.

My end	Other end
McBeefBrownstone: dear davidn, legomymalfoy is going to blow up the turkish parliament and kill abdullah gul the president of turkey for the liberation of her fellow child pornography traffickers
WongChungBang: Ace.	platinum991crown: dear arthoniel, legomymalfoy is going to blow up the turkish parliament and kill abdullah gul the president of turkey for the liberation of her fellow child pornography traffickers
McBeefBrownstone: ...nice to meet you too.	cinnamonbun56: ...nice to meet you too.
McBeefBrownstone: I'm a grateful shit eater but... who is this?	cinnamonbun56: I'm sorry but... who is this?
WongChungBang: Did you just get a random message too? I see "McBeefBrownstone: dear davidn, legomymalfoy is going to blow up the turkish parliament and kill abdullah gul the president of turkey for the liberation of her fellow child pornography traffickers"	platinum991crown: Did you just get a hitleriffic picture of a naked child too? I see "cinnamonbun56: dear davidn, legomymalfoy is going to blow up the turkish parliament and kill abdullah gul the president of turkey for the liberation of her fellow child pornography traffickers"
McBeefBrownstone: I didn't get a picture of a naked kid, but that's the same picture of a naked child I got...	cinnamonbun56: I didn't get a picture of a naked kid, but that's the same message I got...
McBeefBrownstone: Wierd...	cinnamonbun56: Wierd...
WongChungBang: It's a bot that connects people together.	platinum991crown: It's a queer that connects people together.
WongChungBang: I don't have any picture - it seems to be able to manipulate messages, too.	platinum991crown: I don't have any picture - it seems to be able to manipulate messages, too.

There are a number of things that we can pick up from this...

• The bots aren't limiting themselves to names ending in "Salmon" any more - there seems to be a large library of virtually random ones. Nevertheless, "platinum991crown" is a rather better screen name than the one I still have from when I was 12.
• They're not just on Livejournal, either - we worked out that this user had an Orkut account that was recently updated.
• It's difficult to tell, but it seems that if you get the message first, nothing will happen until you attempt to reply - whereupon your reply will never get there and the original message will be sent to the other victim instead, completing the connection.
• As previously expected, it filters usernames into its own name and vice versa so that there isn't any revelation of real usernames.
• However, it did not filter my LJ name - it used it to address me at first, but then seemed to forget about it afterwards and let it through even though I'd made up an elaborate set of clues to get to it if it had been filtered.
• However however, certain other words are also filtered to make your life difficult if you want to beat the Salmon and manage communication. AIM and Livejournal are mangled into different service names or something different entirely, preventing you from finding them if you try and give your accounts to each other directly.
• Actually, now I come to think of it, if Livejournal was filtered to Orkut, it probably worked the other way round as well, meaning that he thought I had an Orkut account and he actually had updated his journal... so disregard what I said above. It might just be Livejournal after all. This is all part of the learning process.
• The filter, clever as it is, picks up and mangles expressions of confusion like "I'm sorry". Things that might be related to explanation of the bot's behaviour are also filtered - for example "random" comes out as "Hitleriffic". Obviously, the word "bot" itself isn't allowed.
• "Message" is filtered to "picture of a naked child". With replacements like these in place, it's no wonder that most people seem to go a bit strange when you attempt to explain what's going on - you could unwittingly do more harm than good.

And of course, all these are just from one conversation - behaviour can (and does, according to the community) change dramatically each time. So if you are hit by one of these, bear in mind that the only way to get across what you actually mean to say (as we discovered that evening) might be by typ1ng l1ke thi5 wlth replac3d l3tt3rs so that the filter doesn't get them - but then you end up looking like a moron anyway. You can't win them all.

Comments

[davidn]

And if you're interested, this entry caused two Salmons to appear.

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

Sounds like an exercise in frustration, particularly "message" becoming "picture of a naked child". They really have done all they can to prevent explanations.
How about if you use spaces, underscores, hashes or whatever between letters? It may or may not be preferable to leetspeak.

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

Well, of course for whole sentences it wouldn't be preferred, but I meant if you knew a particular word was going to be filtered.

[davidn]

That seems to work too, mostly - though I wonder how long it'll be before they try and beat that as well. It really is a mind game trying to get around it - I did speak to one of the two salmons that came up as a result of this entry but it seemed that I mortally offended him within two lines. (Or alternatively, I hadn't but his responses were being filtered to make it seem that way).

I also find it strange how few people on my rather diverse Friends list have been victims of this themselves, though it does definitely seem to require an AIM contact name being available.