Paid shill or no, its always up to your own discernment to listen to them or not.

Let the information the member provides stand on its own, ATS is pretty good at deducing the validity of claims on its own.

You could just ignore them.

I find they overwhelmingly have ugly avatars and/or dumb handles, anyways.

One of the easiest ways to spot a shill is they are the ones making claims that others are shills.

Originally posted by OtherSideOfTheCoin
well according to many on ATS I am a “paid shill”

I think the people who make such accusations should be banned from ATS.

Their argument usually goes along these kind of lines, I (or any sane member) debate with them then about 3 or 4 posts in they realise that I know more about the subject than they do, my position is correct as my argument is stronger with a good logical basis and they have no counter argument. This leads to me being called a “ shill”, sometimes unpaid, sometimes paid either by the CIA or the NWO, take your pick.

I am not a shill, there are no shills on ATS.

“Shill” is just a word that the less than intellectual members on ATS like to through around when they have lost an argument. Usually the word shill is used with other insults like “coward”, “troll” or my personal favourite “disinfo agent”. I think that members who use such terms without any proof of these accusations should be treated the same anyone else would be if they were to call someone a “S***head” for example or any other derogatory term.

So yes OP I agree with you we should stop using the term “shill” but not only that I think we should be tougher on those who do use the term.

To say that their are no shills on ATS is naive or ignorant, you are either naive or you are a 'shill'

A "shill" is simply a derogatory word you can call someone and get away with it. There aren't any consequences for you. Try substituting the "N" word in your post and read it through? Just replace the word "shill" with the "N" word. Now what does it sound like? A racist rant, right? That's effectively what you are doing here except the word "shill" is more versatile.

Why not analyze just why you call people "shills" in the first place? You don't like what they say. They disagree with your world view. They think your latest grand conspiracy theory is a piece of poo and tell you so. They ask you for proof and documentation. They point out logical fallacies to your arguments. They point out, for example, that calling someone a "shill" is a logical fallacy because you are calling someone a name rather than addressing the issue at hand. They also might point out a "Straw Man Argument" where you set up some absurd premis, "prove" it wrong, and proclaim you won the argument when your opponent never held that view in the first place.

The nice thing about calling people "shills" is that it is very difficult to disprove. Since it is made up in your head anyway your "proof" is that "It's easy to tell a shill!" when, in fact, there's no evidence at all. So the accusee is left with saying, "No, I'm not a shill" while the accuser goes on a rant. It's akin to saying, "Have you stopped beating your spouse, yes or no?" or accusing someone of being a child molester. The accusation alone is enough to derail anyone. It's a matter of being guilty until proving your innocence.

So when you hear people called "shills" what you are eally hearing is someone saying they don't have any good evidence to refute this "shill," so this is an argument of last resort. It's extremely weak and tells you more about the character of the accuser than his victim.

Can the shill be prevented?

No

Ive been accused of being a shill quite a few times over the last month and a half, based on my views on sandy hook.

99% of the accusations of someone being a shill on this site are garbage. Its an easy ad hom to attempt to discredit someone offering a counter argument or opposing point of view.

I think its pretty interesting the way that it has evolved, though. The most obvious shills these days push fringe conspiracy theory-it used to be that they pushed against conspiracy theory.

Originally posted by Juggernog
Yea, there are some people that are so ravenous about one are two particular topics, its hard to miss them.

Yeah, this is another ATS meme. "If you post about one or two subjects, you're a CIA AGENT!!11!!"

Of course, the actual reason is more on the order of - it's a subject that interests you. e.g. - if you're into ghosts, you tend to post on those threads. I'm not, so I don't. If you think the spiral value of the gematriya of the golden mean of the values of the letters of your name spell out the path through the Tree of Life, well, you'll post on that sort of thread. I think numerology is hogwash, so I don't.

Another reason is that I tend to post on threads where I have some experience IRL. If it's explosives, demolition, nukes, radios, military, aerospace, you'll likely find me there. Because these things have interest for me.

I'm pretty sure that's the situation with everyone on ATS. If you found something uninteresting, why would you post there? It would be, frankly, creepier if you had a flat posting distribution across every ATS topic. I'd say THAT would be indicative of you being a 'shill', or more likely, a 'bot.

Originally posted by captaintyinknots
I think its pretty interesting the way that it has evolved, though. The most obvious shills these days push fringe conspiracy theory-it used to be that they pushed against conspiracy theory.

I think you hit the nail on the head here, and I was thinking it earlier, just didn't have time to post it/didn't want to get merc'd for saying it.
If someone starts denying everything, well it would be very obvious who's a shill and who's not. BUT let's say you knew what the truth was, and wanted to distract people. You can't just say the truth isn't true. Instead just twist the truth, or exaggerate it to make it look ridiculous.

A great example would be threads dealing with Obama. The shills will not be trying to debunk any claims made against him, like many would suppose. They will actually be trying to make matters worse! Because let's face it, Obama is a puppet, and not the ringleader. So they will make fraudulent claims against him in an attempt to focus people's hate towards him.

A magician never tells you to look away.

Im sure there are shills here as we speak. There have been and there will be. I dont think we actually need paid nefarious NSA super spy shills or disinfo agents on here because ATSers are most times their own worst enemy. I tried to expose one ( mainly because I KNEW the guy and was present when the lawsuits concerning him originated) , though was not as eloquent as Chad, and simply called he person a liar, told him to go ahead and whine to a mod about it, and was summarily disciplined for being so brash in my delivery. LMAO!

The term shill is thrown around here carelessly. Not everyone that has some different belief or has a wild idea or disagrees in some crazy vehement way with you is a shill. People that live lifestyles you may not live are shills either. Truth: if you are almost 50 yrs old and have not only 2 professional careers in your lifetime ( so far anyway. I may launch a 3rd and really be nefariously shillery) , but somehow find the time in your life to volunteer with your community, have a hobby, have a home, have a family, and participate in a sport.. youre DEFINITELY a shill... or so I was informed that I was for these reasons. It was just some kind of impossibility to the guy. Somehow these things are unfathomable for some to believe that they can actually be done. IMO this says quite a bit about the accuser! LOL! Im still tring to figure out HOW this makes me a shill...

Maybe we should have an ATS primer on the top 10 most misused labels applied to fellow members and how they launch an ad hominem attack using each of ten words versus proper usage. Oh yeah, we already have several on that whole ad hominem thing.