Spanish Economy Forum Hit by Wave of Clone Accounts

Wave of clone accounts shakes Spanish economy forum

More than fifty accounts peine in a single month, according to one participant's tally. All share the same pattern, say those reporting them: provocative avatars, two-line threads, and replies that address no one. The politics section of one of Spain's leading forums has been fighting a war for weeks that has nothing to do with Euribor or housing. It concerns an individual—or several, as authorship is still disputed—accused of turning the section into a dumping ground for noise. The most repeated accusation: flooding with clone accounts to bury other people's threads and, in doing so, forcing the forum's closure due to saturation.

The most circulated diagnosis points to a single culprit. "Many if not all are multis of that unbearable schizophrenic," summarizes a participant who claims to have tracked the trail for months. Others argue there is something more organized behind it: staff from government-aligned media outlets, communications teams, paid community managers. The theory of entryism—infiltrating to destroy from within—has as many supporters as the theory of simple individual imbalance.

What exactly is flooding and why it matters

Flooding is not about posting often. It is opening empty threads en masse so that topics with real content disappear from the first page. One participant describes it bluntly: "Each politics page had three or four topics; the rest was shit from this segarro." The effect is mechanical: if ten new two-line threads appear every hour, any serious analysis gets buried in minutes.

The community's response has been the oldest tool in the manual: the ignore function. "Ignore everyone, thanks," writes one user. "I already had a couple or three ignored," adds another. But ignoring has an obvious limit: if the author opens a new account every time they get blocked, the block list grows faster than patience. And patience, in an economics forum, is a finite resource.

The blacklist: over 50 identified accounts

A participant has compiled and published an updated list of suspicious accounts that now exceeds fifty. His methodology is rudimentary but effective, he says: same tone, same syntax, same provocative avatars—20th-century European symbolism—and a very specific habit: replying to themselves in their own threads to simulate conversation. "He talks to himself, bumps his own threads, and quotes himself," another summarizes.

The list has become the unofficial document of the conflict. Each new addition is announced with the same ritual: public mention, screenshot, block. Some participants even request a restricted subforum for veterans, "away from neo-fascist riffraff," as a preventive measure. The proposal has little traction: fragmenting the forum is the victory the flooder seeks.

The two competing theories explaining the attack

The first holds that a specific individual is behind it, identified by the community as a former participant with a history of bans, acting out of resentment. "In the end, it was the segarro from Elda behind 99% of the accounts," claims one who says they cross-referenced data. The second points to a coordinated operation: "They come directly from socialist media newsrooms and other pogre dens. They use Hitler or Franco avatars; the dirty trick is clear." The logic would be false flag: turning the forum into a den of extremists to justify its closure.

Neither theory is proven. What is documented is the pattern, according to those reporting it: recently created accounts, activity concentrated in few hours, threads no longer than two lines, avatars designed to provoke. One participant even provides screenshots with cross-dated timestamps that, he says, prove the same individual has kept screenshots of others' messages since September 2022. The full material, with dates and links, is in the original source.

Noise drowns out real debate: VOX and right-wing discontent

While the community discusses who is behind it, the flooding has had a striking side effect: it buried the political debate that actually mattered. On the margins of the conflict emerges the discomfort of part of the right-wing electorate with VOX (the far-right party). One participant lists the reasons: "They acknowledge gender-based violence exist, appoint Steegman instead of Espinosa, make pacts with PP in Aragon, raise salaries across half of Spain." His conclusion is sharp: "VOX's failure has only one responsible party: VOX."

Another adds a nuance that unsettles friend and foe alike: "I voted for Vox's fools, but you lose the urge with so many castrati on the right." The discussion about whether the flooding is a left-wing operation or the tantrum of an imbalanced individual intersects with a more uncomfortable question: what if the noise didn't come from outside, but from within?

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The list of blocked accounts keeps growing. Ignoring works. Flooding also works. And while no one proves who is behind it, the only certainty is that an economics forum with thousands of active participants spends more time defending itself against noise than discussing economics. How many more accounts does it take for the strategy to work?