Is ATS Modifying Your Behaviour In An Experiment?

My first impression of this forum was that it was so well organised and controlled in some interesting ways. I like psychology so I thought I’d check it out. My posts on this forum were deliberately to make the site managers a little nervous if they were US government agents because I wanted to see in what ways they try to control me.
I did learn something from that but by reading other threads I learned more about how they controlled other people.

The site is basically an experiment in behaviour control using a ‘behaviourist psychology’ method known as a ‘token economy’. Token economies are a form of behaviour modification designed to increase desirable behaviour and decrease undesirable behaviour with the use of tokens. Individuals receive tokens immediately after displaying desirable behaviour. The tokens are collected and later exchanged for a meaningful object or privilege.

You get rewards for registering (the ability to post) signing in (access to more information) posting (points which you can use to buy privileges).Your behaviour is shaped by giving you applause for desirable posts or ridicule for undesirable posts. If your behaviour is very good then you might rewarded with the high status of being made a moderator.

You can add friends and customise your and build up a lot of points to increase your status. You are expected to become attached to your own personal profile that you have worked hard for and thus will be less likely to leave and more likely to put up with the controlling behaviour of the site masters for fear of losing your hard earned rewards. In theory the longer you are on the site the more your behaviour is modified.

Token economies are flawed though. Certain types of people are not so easy to control and this is part of the reason why so many people get banned from this site. Some people will post undesirable information regardless of whether or not it is acceptable to the site masters.

Editing or deleting people’s posts changing the topic and ridiculing people before banning them when they still don’t conform is very foolish in many ways. It means that these people will be very critical of this forum when they go to other forums. Their posts and articles together with this site masters’ futile attempts to control them are all over the internet and spreading. Threats of legal action are the main tool used to intimidate but common sense would tell you that you wouldn’t win such cases. Its actually quite ironic that a conspiracy forum would itself be accused of a conspiracy and then try to silence its accusers whilst its whole purpose is to encourage conspiracies about others. I’m sure legal action would attract the attention of many more independent journalists and conspiracy theorists and only make the situation worse.

The allegations that this site’s IP address was traced to Langley (well known as the headquarters of the CIA) is very interesting and when it was posted on Belowtopsecret the site masters’ responded by saying it was an April fools joke and then quickly closed the thread. All the relevant information is on the internet. Another interesting allegation is that this site was registered in the name of a British guy called Simon Gray who didn’t even exist. The site is now registered under Bill Irvine’s name.

Some people have alleged that Christian Bailey (formerly Christian Jozefowicz-Seifert) and Paige Craig (a former US Marine who served in Iraq) might be behind this site. Christian Bailey is famous for paying Iraqi newspapers to print US propaganda written by military psy-op teams. It has been suggested that Simon Gray is a front for Christian Bailey. Anyway I think I’ll stay away from forums now as I’m disappointed in them. Have fun googling for all the posts that I got this information from (the token economy bit is my own analysis).

Here's the information that I copied off a website. Its on several websites though.

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Gray, Simon
[SNIP]
IP Address
213.206.128
213.206.129
213.206.130
Node Name
Gov-bb21-lan-14
Gov-bb22-lan-15
Gov-bb23-lan-16
Location
Langley, Virginia
MS
60
Network Used
whois.nic.mil (for military network information)
It was difficult to get the IP Address, It was spoofed and looped over 9 times.

What is MOST interesting is that the information on this WhoIs entry was updated on 6 January 2006. Wonder what triggered that? I also wondered what it said before January 6, 2006?


Mod Edit: Removed personal information.



[edit on 15-12-2008 by Gemwolf]

I'm not really sure what to say to this. I am interested in what you are saying however. If this is true, I doubt this thread will live to see my post.

This issue has been discussed (more than once) in this thread.

To be more specific check out THIS POST. It should answer most of your questions, and if you have more questions, don't hesitate to add them to that thread.

Thank you.

Thread closed.