Yesterday, MHN posted a damning exposé about Caroline Farrow. She was quite a bit upset with my media inquiry letter which was sent beforehand to give her a chance to point out any factual errors. Caroline went so far as posting on Twitter that my media inquiry made her, “throw up in fear” (archive). Today, a user called ‘Erasmus of Rotterdam’, posted bizarre allegations on Kiwifarms, claimed to have hacked MHN and the editor’s PC, but was especially upset about questions 10 and 11 in the letter. Those questions were never published. There are grounds for investigation as to whether the poster was in fact Caroline Farrow, sock-puppetting.
So, who could it be? Firstly, I do not have a copy of anything uploaded to Kiwi Farms so if a copy of the letter was actually uploaded, I have not verified it is the real letter. However, the poster must have at least seen the real letter to know about the questions. So, there is a limited pool of suspects.
Full disclosure. I do not normally correspond with Stephanie Hayden but as they were a subject of the story, I sent them a copy of my letter. Another went to Simon Just. Finally of course, a copy was sent to Farrow via her solicitors. Not long after, Louise Moody claimed to have read the letter. From time to time, Caroline Farrow has been advised by Adrian Yalland, so I considered he might have had a copy. All of these people have at times been accused of sock-puppetting, save that I discount Farrow’s solicitors as likely culprits having no reason to suspect them of socking nor breach of confidence.
The ‘Erasmus of Rotterdam’ account was created on 1 September 2022. It is an account mostly notable for a virulent hatred of transgender persons, variously describing them as fat, eunuch, paedophiles (note the British spelling of ‘paedophile’ as opposed to the American, ‘pedophile’). The account was created before my beef with Farrow and comments mostly on a debate my supporters and I have little involvement in. Beyond a suspicion they are British, who could it be.
But … we have such a short suspects list. Who would be really, really upset about my article about Caroline Farrow? Who would claim to have hacked my hard drive, when they only actually have access to one document – clumsily trying to be, “down with the kids”, if you can call the members of a stalking site, “kids”. I could just imagine Erasmus beginning a post with, “Hello fellow Kiwi Farmers”. Indeed, I had been talking about this with Hayden and Just all day, also separately with the hacktivist Echo. Echo is a younger woman in her twenties and by eerie coincidence had made the very same point about Farrow being a cringe user of Kiwi Farms.
So, I decided to make use of a tool we have had for some time. An AI neural text analyser. Continue reading