Hundreds of people on ten accounts each having the capacity to look like thousands of people is part of the problem Ellen Pao's essay is trying to highlight.

We're still human beings, and even though we all abstractly know that throwaway accounts exist, when you're getting 10,000 PMs that say you suck, it matters. Besides, evidence from Twitter suggests that it's demonstrably more often an easily-led mob than hundreds of sock-puppets these days.