About the Cambrian News

The Cambrian News is a weekly paper circulated in Wales, established in 1860 and headquartered in Aberystwyth. Known to many for their headlines.

Cambrian News front page with the headline I didn’t know guinea pigs could swim
Source: facebook.com/groups/2386948702
Newspaper clipping with the headline Cyclist not drunk
Source: facebook.com/groups/2386948702

Online Comments

The online version of the newspaper has recently been besieged by a bigoted, xenophobic troll going by the handle 'FredEvans'.

Examples of comments posted by the account FredEvans
Example of comments

The comments go against the Terms and Conditions set out by the Cambrian News community rules yet they seem unable or unwilling to take action.

'Fred' has become a talking point offline, having been in conversation with people asking "does anyone know who this Fred is?"

Looking at the comments

Between the 9th December 2022 and 31st August 2023 'FredEvans' has left a surprising 2,630 comments over 1,142 articles.

The volume of comments ever increasing, with a notable uptake around August of 2023.

Cumulative line chart of comments posted between 2009 and 2023
Number of comments over time

'Fred' has clearly been busy and leaving so many comments can be time consuming. The graph below shows which days and time 'Fred' leaves comments.

Heat map showing the days and hours when comments were posted
Days and times of comments

Are all of 'Freds' comment bigoted?

Running all of 'Freds' comments through Sentiment Analysis shows that 67% of their comments are negative.

Top keywords

The word cloud below (everyone loves a word cloud) shows 'Freds' most used words.

Word cloud of terms frequently used by FredEvans, led by Wales and Welsh
Frequently used words

Getting Triggered

'Fred' is selective and doesn't comment on all posts. To determine which articles trigger them, I clustered articles based on similarity and extracted the top keywords from those clusters.

Don't feed the trolls

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

While the Cambrian News has permitted 'Fred' to persist in spreading hateful views, several users have chosen to mimic 'Fred' by establishing accounts under the same handle to post contrasting opinions.

A comment posted by an imitation FredEvans account
Imitation 'Fredevans'
Table ranking the accounts most likely to interact with FredEvans
Accounts mostly likely to interact with 'Fred'

Engagement with 'Fred' has resulted in more comments by them.

Cumulative line chart comparing the most active commenters over time
Top commenters over time

Interestingly many of these accounts have a short response times to 'Freds' comments.

Worth mentioning is an account under the handle 'Lea Shore,' which often holds views similar to 'Fred' and is quick to respond to comments. Over half of the comments from this account are considered negative.

Could 'Fred' be operating multiple accounts? The available data is insufficient to confirm this. Could this situation be an example of "correlation does not imply causation"? Quite likely.

Example chart showing a spurious correlation between pool drownings and Nicolas Cage films
spurious correlations - Source: tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

So who is 'FredEvans'?

I don't know nor do I care. But here is how midjourney imagines what 'Fred' might look like.

Four AI-generated images of older men using laptops while wearing or wrapped in Union Jack clothing
Midjourney interpretation of FredEvans

Hopefully the Cambrian News finds a way to mitigate the trolls soon.