It was bound to come back to haunt him at some point, but Bill Hobbs has been forced to break cover after people in his home town of Nashville came across the various posts by me, Kev Murphy and Brett Fausett that fingered him as being Steve Forrest – the most-biased man in showbusiness and the brawn behind Free2Innovate.net.
Mr Hobbs is a right-wing political blogger who takes very aggressive stances on whatever topic happens to come along that day. Fitting the model of such people beautifully, it would also appear that Mr Hobbs is a tremendous hypocrite as he has been posting consistently about the need for transparency without divulging that for two years or so he posed as an apparently independent blogger called Steven Forrest.
The controversy comes over the fact that Steve Forrest was so unbelievably biased and so monumentally inaccurate about Internet governance issues that many questioned what on earth he was posting for. And how he got hold of insider documents when no one had ever met him, or spoken to him, or seen him.
After a long while of putting up with Mr Forrest’s rants and misrepresentations, it finally became necessary to point out that every single post on the site reflected the specific viewpoint of dotcom owner VeriSign. And that there was a big bundle of evidence to point to the fact that it was a bloke named Bill Hobbs behind the propaganda.
Unfortunately we were never able to find evidence that Hobbs/Forrest was being paid by VeriSign for its PR work but then if someone who doesn’t know very much about the Internet and its governance structures suddenly decides to write about it in depth once a week, gains access to quite hard-to-get documents and trumpets 100 percent of the time the very distinct perspective of the Net’s most powerful company, well then you are entitled to raise your doubts.
After Murphy’s, Fausett’s and my blog posts, Mr Forrest shut up shop immediately and has never returned. The domain expired last month.
Nashville
So anyway, these posts were chanced upon by someone in Nashville who has clearly had run-ins with Mr Hobbs who then enquired whether they were true.
Sure enough, Bill Hobbs in true Steve Forrest style decided that he would roar his way of it. Unfortunately there was a stack of evidence that pinned the owner of Free2Innovate now only down to Mr Hobb’s hometown, but also to his house and his email account.
Mr Hobbs has answers to three questions put to him:
Why did Bill Hobbs and Steve Forrest email the same man from the same address?
My client on the project, the pseudonymous Steven Forrest, still had dial-up internet connection when I set the site up for him, so he sometimes worked at my house on my computer, using my broadband connection.
Why did Steve signed his email “Bill”?
My client and I shared a rather common first name.
Most importantly: Why did the posts at Free2Innovate stop immediately after the three bloggers linked about suggested that Bill Hobbs was the author?
From what I can tell, posting at the site had dwindled in the months before that, so perhaps he was just tired of doing it – the site never had near the traffic he thought it might. I haven’t spoken to him in more than a year but I know he wanted to retain his anonymity.
As far as I know he wasn’t paid to write it. He paid me a small amount to set up the site and design it. As for whether I wrote it, I know virtually nothing about most of the topics that were regularly covered on that site.
Okay, so this is the scenario as painted by Bill Hobbs – who did incidentally say on his blog (and I believe I have a screengrab here somewhere) that he would write corporate blogs for money and did outline the use of anonymous blogging for corporations.
According to Bill Hobbs, he was paid by someone called Bill whose surname he won’t divulge to set up a blog. Not only did he set it up but that person also regularly came round to his house – apparently whenever he wanted, judging from the times of the emails received – to send emails to people. The reason that Bill couldn’t do this from his own house was because he only had a dial-up connection.
So there you go – a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Except, as people tend to feel inspired to do when someone is talking out of their arse, a bloke called Tim W, who unfortunately for our Bill appears to specialise in the use of English, decided he would analyse some of the writing written by Bill One and Bill Two and he found – would you believe it – glaring similarities:
The phrase “read the whole thing” occurs many times on both blogs to prompt the reader to follow a link. While the words in themselves aren’t overly unusual, their position and usage in the context of their surrounding blog posts are suspect:
Another curiosity to this armchair Encyclopedia Brown is the phrase “Yes it is,” which both authors use many times in a highly specific manner. First of all, standard punctuation calls for a comma between ‘yes’ and ‘it is.’ Second, the way in which the phrase is used is absolutely identical in both weblogs. See for yourselves:
And he helpfully provides links.
The next level of the lie?
So where does Bill Hobbs go from here? Does he now claim that he also wrote the occasional piece for his friend Bill when he popped in to use email (a service which, coincidentally, works extremely well on a 28.8Kbps line)?
Or does he try to avoid the really difficult question about possible payment from VeriSign (for which there is a whole other mountain of coincidences) by admitting it was him and pre-empting what could become an embarrassing drip-drip of revelatory information?
Here’s my prediction: an aggressive response in which he tries, unsuccessful to turn the tables on the people questioning him, followed by a refusal to answer any questions about it. If the good people of Nashville want to find out the truth, they just have to keep asking questions.
Kevin Murphy
January 31, 2007 at 10:14 amJust for clarity — Bill Hobbs and Steven Forrest sent me email from the same IP address, not from the same email account.
Kieren
January 31, 2007 at 10:48 amYes, thanks Kev. Putting Bill Two in Hobbs’ house. You can spoof an email address, you can’t spoof an IP address.
Kieren
Nashville Is Talking
January 31, 2007 at 10:07 pmAccusers React…
Two of the bloggers featured in the Steve Forrest/Bill Hobbs blog post from two days ago have responded to the thread here. One guy seems totally over it and says I should relax, the other prompts me (and you) to……
Tman
January 31, 2007 at 10:53 pmThis is some of the most pathetic blog whining I’ve ever read. If you truly are basing your “evidence” for this incredibly meaningless kerfuffle on the phrases “read the whole thing” and “Yes it is” than I suggest you consider a career in something other than investigative journalism. Maybe 5th grade school teacher, so there will be more people you can relate to on your level.
Kieren
January 31, 2007 at 11:04 pmBlimey it’s been a while since this blog has seen someone who has enough time on their hands to type up idiotic comments but not enough to actually read the blog post they are commenting on.
I must have said something about American politics somewhere.
Kieren
Tman
January 31, 2007 at 11:10 pmMan, I love that word “blimey”. Awesome word.
So Kieren, what is the smoking gun here? What is the evidence that so obviously leads you to believe that Hobbs posted pro-verisign blog posts under the name Steve Forrest?
difficulty: You cannot use the phrase “read the whole thing” or “Yes it is”.
Kieren
January 31, 2007 at 11:45 pmIt really is very simple. Mr Hobbs’ story is so unlikely that you only have to ask questions about it and it will fall apart.
* Bill Two visited the house just twice? What were those dates? Does Bill One remember anything in particular about it – like the time of day?
* Is Bill Two absolutely sure it was only twice? There’s no other time Bill Two could have sent emails from his house?
* How long has Bill One knows Bill Two?
* How did they meet?
* Has Bill One built many blogs for people?
* How many of those people came round his house?
* How did Bill Two communicate that he wanted the blog to end?
* Did Bill Two buy the domain? Or Bill One?
* If Bill One was so uninterested in Bill Two’s content, why did he consistently link to it in the early days of Free2Innovate?
And so on. The more information there is, the more the story will unravel. But I have no interest in chasing Mr Hobbs. I already know he posed as Steven Forrest for two years. I’m just glad he stopped because Forrest’s posts were spreading misinformation by misrepresentating facts.
Kieren
Tman
February 1, 2007 at 12:11 amAll of the questions you asked Bill has answered. I’m not Bill Hobbs, but from the answers he gave I can tell you this-
Bill Hobbs has several friends, some of them bloggers, that have visited his house more than twice.
I would assume that there could be more than two times that “Billtwo” emailed from his house, but Bill says otherwise. I see no reason why he would lie about that. I cede the floor to Bill Hobbs for his explanation –I set up a blog for someone else who wanted to write under a pseudonym. He used my PC two times – once when I was showing him how to do things “under the hood” of Movable Type, and another when we were attempting to fix the blog’s ability to ward of comment spam by installing various plug-ins and upgrading the MT software to the latest version.
If he sent email during that time, it would have been sent from my PC over my IP address.
I was paid by my client to set up the blog and install its design and such – I’ve done that for several people, by the way. I was not a paid blogging shill for a corporation as the various blog posts Brittney linked to assert. I do not know the motivations of the blogger who wrote the site, but the claims that it is a corporate shill blog seem odd given that most of the content of the blog had nothing to do with that company. One of the people pushing the assertion is a reporter who admits that his motivation for making the assertion is that the blogger took issue with his coverage of that corporation.”
I would assume Bill Hobbs linked to his clients new blog as a courtesy, which would be a smart business decision.
So far you would get laughed out of any court room in the US. You say “I already know he posed as Steven Forrest for two years.” So far all you have is circumstantial evidence that if applied through Occams razor would reveal a very different story than what you are claiming.
What else ya got?
Kieren
February 1, 2007 at 9:35 amAm I on some bad police drama like CSI? This is like talking to a goldfish that has had one coffee too many.
Let’s assume for a second that we are in fact in a court room where there is also a giant Ockam’s Razor (let’s leave the Smoking Gun for a second).
First of all the responses you provide don’t actually answer a single one of the questions. And you also don’t get to answer several precise questions in one vague all-encompassing blurb.
Let’s walk the case over to Friar Ockham’s Razor. The idea is to make the least number of assumptions. The facts are:
* Someone called Bill who was posing as a man called Steven Forrest sent emails from Bill Hobbs’ house
* Bill Hobbs has admitted to knowing this person, and to building the website where “Steven Forrest” posted his comments
* Bill Hobbs is a professional blogger who advertises his blogging services on his website
* Immediately after Bill Hobbs was named as Steven Forrest, the blog stopped
Now my assumptions are:
* Bill Hobbs is Steven Forrest
Your assumptions are:
* Bill is friends with someone else called Bill who asked him to build a blog
* This second Bill visited first Bill’s house a few times (even though the entire business transaction could be carried out online)
* This second Bill was allowed to send emails from Bill house when he was over there (which, incidentally, was about one year after the blog went up).
* The second Bill decided to put an end to his blog when his friend Bill Hobbs was named as his pseudonym because he didn’t want people to find out his true identity
It depends what particular fantasy court case we’re in here but if we’re working to “balance of probabilities” well then we have a guilty man.
Please actually read this response slowly before replying. I don’t have many more CSI moments left in me.
Kieren
Tman
February 1, 2007 at 5:03 pmA goldfish that had one too many cups of coffee? Never heard that one before. Should I be proud? Offended? Mildly amused? All so confusing.
Now to your “case” or lack thereof-
Let’s walk the case over to Friar Ockham’s Razor. The idea is to make the least number of assumptions. The facts are:
* Someone called Bill who was posing as a man called Steven Forrest sent emails from Bill Hobbs’ house
* Bill Hobbs has admitted to knowing this person, and to building the website where “Steven Forrest†posted his comments
* Bill Hobbs is a professional blogger who advertises his blogging services on his website
* Immediately after Bill Hobbs was named as Steven Forrest, the blog stopped
All true except for the last one. The blog died out because the owner stopped posting. As much as you would like it to be so, your diatribe supposedly exposing Bill Hobbs as Steven Forrest thus causing the blog to expire has little basis in fact.
Now my assumptions are:
* Bill Hobbs is Steven Forrest
Yes, we gathered that.
Your assumptions are:
* Bill is friends with someone else called Bill who asked him to build a blog
It’s not an assumption, it’s a fact. Bill Hobbs has done this for several people.
* This second Bill visited first Bill’s house a few times (even though the entire business transaction could be carried out online)
Had you read any of Bills responses, you would see WHY he went to Bills house to post. If I was paying someone to help me get a blog started, and they offered to have me come to their house to get show how to use the blog, I would go there. It would be easier to have this explained in person than online.
* This second Bill was allowed to send emails from Bill house when he was over there (which, incidentally, was about one year after the blog went up).
The emails were a year after the blog went up? You sure? Not that it would matter, but this may be another “fact” of yours that may need further examination.
* The second Bill decided to put an end to his blog when his friend Bill Hobbs was named as his pseudonym because he didn’t want people to find out his true identity
According to Hobbs, the blog ended because no one was reading it and it was cost prohibitive to keep it running. Again, this would apply nicely through Occams razor.
You have no evidence. You have no smoking gun, perhaps that’s why you asked that we “leave that for a minute”. If you did, you would have presented it to the court in all its glory, not this flimsy circumstantial evidence. You do not have a smoking gun. With the evidence you’ve presented, no jury would convict Hobbs of writing under Steven Forrest’s pseudonym.
Tell me more about this goldfish, because your case has no merit. Does he take it black? Sugar? Cream?
Kieren
February 1, 2007 at 5:16 pmWell, you’ve had your say. It defies all rules of rational argument so I think it’s probably best to leave it at that.
Your comments will remain here in case anyone wants to read them.
If you feel the need to reply with some personal abuse, which I feel sure you will, please be advised that I will delete it.
Kieren
Tman
February 1, 2007 at 5:31 pm“Defies all rules of rational argument”? How? Why do you avoid the smoking gun? What single argument have you made that is even remotely relevant?
So you won’t explain the goldfish?
scarshapedstar
February 28, 2008 at 7:12 pmDude. Tman.
Bill made a sockpuppet. It happens ALL THE TIME on the internets. You can’t fight Occam’s Razor.
Two posts come from the same IP address, 99.9999999% of the time it’s the same person. Do you accept or reject this premise?
scarshapedstar
February 28, 2008 at 7:14 pmWhoops, sorry for the necro.
Mark D
February 29, 2008 at 3:47 amYou know, I have tons of barely-known business associates who just stop by my house to use email, even though they can do it fine on dial-up, or at the library, or even at one of their friends’ or relatives’ houses.
Yep. They just pop by all the time. Just to use my email.
/snark
Someone may want to double check Tman’s IP with that of Hobbs. Just a thought …
Dilapidus
March 1, 2008 at 5:13 amJust to add to the improbabilities (sorry if this is already clear) but how likely is it really that someone would want create a blog, when they have to use someone else’s machine just to do emailing?
I mean, crikey, a blog tends to require regular access to the internets! Many, if not most, blogs are updated more than once a day.
overnight pharmacy
October 2, 2008 at 8:47 pmPharmacy with overnight delivery…
Hey guys, do you know where I can find an overnight pharmacy ?…
TBogg » Hobbs Choice
October 11, 2009 at 9:17 pm[…] Oh, this just gets better. 27 Comments […]
TBogg » Why don’t you pass the time by commenting on some blogs?
October 11, 2009 at 9:28 pm[…] I would be on the lookout for "Mary Rosh", "Sprezzatura", Maggie Gallagher, Armstrong Williams, and "Steven Forrest". […]