Study proves existence of paid disinformation agents.

It's not just in China anymore! The following study, titled "Battling the Internet Water Army: Detection of Hidden Paid Posters" details some of the inner workings of the disinformation agents, how to detect them and how to combat them.

arxiv.org...

According to the following article in WND titled "White House operative heading ‘birther’ smear campaign?", the paid disinformation agents are "apparently operating with the full approval and cooperation of the president..."

www.wnd.com...

The paid posters apparently have their own set of rules according to the following article titled "Twenty-Five Ways To Suppress Truth: The Rules of Disinformation."

www.whale.to...

Main stream news media have even had to admit their existence, as evidenced by this BBC article titled "Fake forum comments are 'eroding' trust in the web."

www.bbc.co.uk...

Some of these paid disinformation agents even boast about their profession such as this blogger stating "I'm paid to post disinformation online."

bondibox.newsvine.com...

Apparently Israel's internet disinformation budget was only $150,000 in 2009 but I'm guessing it's much larger now:

current.com...

In my opinion, paid disinformation agents probably make up over half of the posts on public forums, since these posts closely follow "the rules of disinformation" as referenced above.

Other links that may be interesting:

uncensored.co.nz...

www.dailykos.com...

www.defence.pk...

i think you're one of them!

how much did they pay you to come in here and tell us that they have people like you to do this?

reply to post by qver74


I have to say I have no doubt of this. People will do anything for money I guess. I still have faith in the internet though. Now I'm going back to read the links. Thanks for posting this.

I wonder if they get paid by piece work or by the hour . I am sure people there are people whom just do it for free and get off misleading and disagreeing with everything.

nice. I love this stuff. It too often gets swept under the rug by people. The thing is it's the same tactics that used to be in ink on the newspaper. Remember that thing. paper with news printed on it. lol.

I think this sort of information comes first. You can learn the most truth form those trying to spread the lies. They put flags in what you are not supposed to know or think.

It's like a kid whistling with his hands in his pant´s pockets rocking back and forth looking from side to side. You just ask, ok what did you do?

so yeah, this is good stuff. likey likey a l o t

This has been going on always, just using different communication modalities. I didn't see it on arpa in the late 70's, but I did see it start up in the early 80's through UseNet groups, specifically alt.conspiracy, alt.nostradamus and other alt. groups that dealt with CIA and UN information (I was usually on alt.2600 and other groups but I have always had an interest in "real" worldview manipulation by the PTB). I learned way back then that if you want to filter the truth from the BS, you better be prepared to do a bit of work and use a lot of common sense. The best outlook I find is it is all BS until proven otherwise ;-)

Cheers - Dave

reply to post by qver74

Study proves existence of paid disinformation agents

Obama has already admitted to doing just this thing... though in the name of protecting the integrity of truth. There is no doubt or denial that there are people paid to visit boards just like this one... to alter opinions and shout down topics that run contrary to officially preferred thinking.

And to this end, there is always the possibility, no matter how remote, that ATS is in itself a frontstore for any of a number of alphabet agencies, CIA, NSA, etc. What better way to track and keep tabs on the latest conspiracy theories and information leakages? Create a website that attracts the nations top outside thinkers like moths to a flame!

No matter. If the latter is the case, I am grateful that my tax dollars have gone to at least one useful purpose, lol!

I wonder if Phage has anything to say about this

I thought I would link the most relevant thread I found on ATS with tons of great info and frankly is well written too.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Thanks op ..just wanted to bookmark and do a little reading ...peace

After reading through all that information, I have to say I see a lot of those traits in certain posters here and yes I will name names: hooper, Alfie(sp?) and ProudBird. They use a mixture of stuff from the 3rd link.

What is strange to me is; lets say there was no conspiracy. Lets say all of us who believe 911, JFK, RFK and other important events in our history are wrong.. Then why would they care? .. . The people doing organized (not just the people I listed) debunking just goes to prove there is something to hide. Most of the time is so obvious.

What would be their motivation? Money ? Love for their country ? Well if they loved their country they would realize its part of constitution to be able to say and think what we want.

If I did not believe in this stuff I would not even bother with a web site like this. No matter what the people here were saying. I do believe that our country is being ran by a bunch of sociopaths. And my motivation for looking for the truth is the love I have for my family I do not want my kids growing up in this corruption.

Originally posted by michael1983l
I wonder if Phage has anything to say about this

I think, like me, he'd be pretty annoyed if people were being paid to spread disonformation on ATS

But it would explain why every year we get a fresh influx of new people coming up with the same old nonsense that's been disproven so many time before.

(I guess disinfo agents only get paid for a while and then get disappeared?)

I'm not surprised in the least. There have been a few mishaps on the agents part that made it to mainstream news that kinda confirmed it. Anybody remember the army corps of engineers that were posting comments on the Louisiana message board trash talking posters that were critical of their efforts in the hurricane Katrina fiasco? When the local news confronted them they got the run around from a spokesman for the corp.

That incident in itself confirmed what I suspected for a long time and honestly really isn't that surprising. I've been a long time lurker but fairly new member and I can safely say I think they have infiltrated this site as well based on the way some posters attack other posters routinely for thinking outside the box.

I wouldn't be surprised if this thread didn't get alot of attention, if you know what I mean

The topic of dis-info agents has interested me for quite some time now. Thanks for putting it up.

I haven't read all the links......yet, but I did read the 25 rules. Sounds very much like a smash and grab technique without a lot of focus being put on doing anything intelligently. They are all very immature tactics. Back when I was a paid poster, (not a dis-info agent, there's a difference) I was able to pick and choose which sites and forums I posted in. After some time of building up my workload, up to close to 100 sites a day, I learned how to say the most in as few words as possible. There were usually guidelines on how few to how many words you could post and you couldn't deviate from those parameters. WHAT you said wasn't as important as HOW MUCH you said. If you wanted to continue working that particular job, you had better make a good quality post IN AS FEW WORDS AS POSSIBLE, otherwise the site owner would not ask that you come back and you lose that particular job. The whole point really of the type of job that people like me did was to build up the base of people who frequent new sites and to help maintain the membership numbers of established sites by contributing quality material. Like this post for example.

These dis-info agents care nothing about any of that. And for that reason alone, while this whole dis-info thing seems to be gaining steam, it's going to be short-lived IMO. Especially on sites like this where the majority of people still seem to be more interested in intelligent discussions than pissing matches.

I wouldn't worry too much about it, because posters like these dis-info agents annoy people more than they influence them. And since their "job" is to infuence people, they won't have it very long because the people who finance the posters will find out soon enough that their tactics simply don't work because their agenda is a negative one. That, and they don't even put any emphasis on SEO optimization. By the time I'm done here, dis-info will be between 2.5 and 5%. I'm dis-informing te dis-informants by, if any other reason, giving the search engines what they need to pick up on this post.

They're idiots.

Web sites like this one, glady, don't suffer fools like dis-info agents a lot. And it's especially good considering the size of and scope of this site.

Originally posted by michael1983l
I wonder if Phage has anything to say about this

He'll dis-info that one REALLY quick.

He's one of 'em.

I wouldn't be surprised if this thread didn't get alot of attention, if you know what I mean

If you want threads like this to be seen, use SEO techniques. Find the popular keywords of the day, implement them in a post when you can, keeping it sounding natural, and try not to give it more than a 5% ratio. 5 words per thousand for instance.

Those shills don't do that so you can beat them at their own game by that one simple method. Which would be more effective do you think? Sending a message to a board where only the current viewers are seeing it, or sending a message that you're tailoring to be picked up by Google so even MORE people can see it?

This may not seem like a big deal now, but if these people start growing in mumbers, they may very well start to influence people in a negative way. The world is nagative enough as it is. We don't need more.

Deny ingnorance. Gotta get back to work.

I just wish I could get paid to post here.

Though, I've been accused many times by people who have different ideological views.

C'est la vie.

S&F for a well thought out thread.

reply to post by qver74

Hey do you have any info on where to sign up? I could use a bit of extra cash to feed my Ferrets

It's easy to spot them,

you see...ANY human listens to reason. Unless they are paid not to.

It's as simple as that.

Disinfo agents on ATS are easy to spot, see they all have this orange frame around their posts Seriously though, some of these people are so prolific one has to wonder sometimes...