I am a student at University of the People. It's an online-only school which relies on volunteer instructors who are paid a small honorarium for each class. Instructor involvement varies from instructor-to-instructor, but most act mostly as moderators rather than instructors. This is due to the "peer learning" environment of the school.
In 2015, the university either hired or hosted (or had some relationship with) an instructor who was fired a month later. He was fired because he'd lied about his credentials. He claimed to have a PhD from either Stanford or MIT, but had none.
Prior to volunteering at the school, he'd worked on building up an online profile for himself. Yes, astroturfing.
He wrote a few "academic" articles on Second Life. In one, he claims one of the founders of the game as his co-author or a contributor. He "published" this article to a couple of websites and then he posted it on Wikimedia Commons. It has even been cited in real academic works.
He wrote a self-published book on Second Life which he submitted to the Library of Congress. He leverages this quite often.
He claimed to hold a "world record" on an ACM ICPC challenge. And he managed to work this into the ACM ICPC article on Italian Wikipedia which has since been removed.
He used Freebase and Wikidata to create "info boxes" about himself on search engines.
He even spent time writing fake articles promoting himself on a websites including Blasting News and IMDb. On the latter he claims to have created a commercial with Julia Roberts.
The best part is that while he was at University of the People he was also running a service to help students cheat services like Turnitin. This was something he prompted on LinkedIn, Reddit, and even Wikipedia. Yes, the traces are still there on Wikipedia.
To this day, the guy holds a grudge against the university. He posts fake reviews on TrustPilot. He posts comments on the Reddit sub such as posing as a fake recruiter or going on about the university's subsidiary in Israel. He uses a plethora of socks and IPs to edit the university's Wikipedia pages and engage in edit wars. He has also tried to scrub some of his past actions by getting articles deleted.
And this doesn't even get into his attacks on other institutions, attempt to run an Italian NGO/political party, and more. My mind continues to be blown as I dig into his activities.
I am a student at University of the People. It's an online-only school which relies on volunteer instructors who are paid a small honorarium for each class. Instructor involvement varies from instructor-to-instructor, but most act mostly as moderators rather than instructors. This is due to the "peer learning" environment of the school.
In 2015, the university either hired or hosted (or had some relationship with) an instructor who was fired a month later. He was fired because he'd lied about his credentials. He claimed to have a PhD from either Stanford or MIT, but had none.
Prior to volunteering at the school, he'd worked on building up an online profile for himself. Yes, astroturfing.
He wrote a few "academic" articles on Second Life. In one, he claims one of the founders of the game as his co-author or a contributor. He "published" this article to a couple of websites and then he posted it on Wikimedia Commons. It has even been cited in real academic works.
He wrote a self-published book on Second Life which he submitted to the Library of Congress. He leverages this quite often.
He claimed to hold a "world record" on an ACM ICPC challenge. And he managed to work this into the ACM ICPC article on Italian Wikipedia which has since been removed.
He used Freebase and Wikidata to create "info boxes" about himself on search engines.
He even spent time writing fake articles promoting himself on a websites including Blasting News and IMDb. On the latter he claims to have created a commercial with Julia Roberts.
The best part is that while he was at University of the People he was also running a service to help students cheat services like Turnitin. This was something he prompted on LinkedIn, Reddit, and even Wikipedia. Yes, the traces are still there on Wikipedia.
To this day, the guy holds a grudge against the university. He posts fake reviews on TrustPilot. He posts comments on the Reddit sub such as posing as a fake recruiter or going on about the university's subsidiary in Israel. He uses a plethora of socks and IPs to edit the university's Wikipedia pages and engage in edit wars. He has also tried to scrub some of his past actions by getting articles deleted.
And this doesn't even get into his attacks on other institutions, attempt to run an Italian NGO/political party, and more. My mind continues to be blown as I dig into his activities.