Goverment Hires Internet Trolls to Disrupt Online Forums

Similar to one of my threads a while back:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Dustytoad

EarthCitizen07
reply to post by Dustytoad

 

Everyone has their own personality coupled with the enviroment they grew up in. I am not sure which is more important but both are.

You must be a psychology major. Man you guys LOVE to split hairs and get all technical.

I try to keep it high school and old school as much as possible. Like a 57 chevy!

More like a high school drop out who got a GED and went to some community college and decided to stop.. I just think and research a lot. I was going to school to become an electrical engineer some day.

I'll keep it simple:

I agree with your first point.

Yeah I didnt make much of myself either. Never liked college enough to get a bachelors degree but my parents were all over me to go for it. I wanted vocational school to become a car mechanic. To please them I went for computer science which I sort of liked back then and ended up getting associate of science.

Having gone through a few pages of this thread and reading a few posts its hilarious to watch how many members on this forum appear to self-implode into a state of paranoia. I think its a tell tale sign that one or two of you are really wrapped up in this conspiracy theory agenda - I would respectfully suggest you take a break from ATS - not everyone is a "troll". Personally, I don't enjoy reading pages within a thread (which wasn't very informative to start of with) turn into a witch hunt against individual members.

reply to post by Metallicus


The nsa are a bunch of conspiracy nutters.

www.nsa.gov...

FlyersFan

I've only been in the 9/11 forum twice and it's because I stumbled in there by accident. The people were exceptionally rude and each side hangs on to their notions about 9/11 RELIGIOUSLY. It's insane. And some of the theories are whacked. Seriously whacked. But if you interject common sense, suddenly you are a 'shill' or whatever. I don't go in there. The 9/11 forum is an embarrassment IMHO.

If you meant all the other forumns, then yes I agree with you.

Yes .. my comments are about the other forums.

I have never been in the 911 forum, it seems to get a bad rep here.
I studied 911 for around 8 years, there really isnt too much that is new to learn.
It WAS an inside job. Planes hit the twin towers, and building 7 is the only steel framed building in the history of mankind to collapse into its own footprint due to a fire.
And a missile or drone hit the pentagon.
I need not know anymore.

When I said about ATS being a psy-op, it was sort of a tongue in cheek remark.
But I still wonder. Before facebook came along, it was forums like these that would let TPTB know who the subversives were, and what they were thinking.
I also saw a hello thread filled with 500 pages of mostly 1 post members at suspicious timeframes, especially at the beginning, as if to make the site look popular, when it would seem a lot of the so called members probably werent even real at all.(yes I have dabbled in dating sites, i know how that works)

John_Rodger_Cornman
reply to post by Metallicus

 

The nsa are a bunch of conspiracy nutters.

www.nsa.gov...

AND SO ARE WE MY FRIEND SO ARE WE WITH GOOD REASON

Dustytoad

WarminIndy


Sometimes my brain hurts. Is it because my brain filled up too much from the input and could not output quickly enough and expanded so much it closed off the places where outflow would normally leave the brain?

Like right now, my brain is starting to hurt just a little.

ehh sorry. All I meant was that programming exists from everything around you and based on that any input that comes in has to get filtered through that.

Meaning that once you spy and collect enough data on the internet as a whole you know how to be able to steer public opinion without brute forcing it.

Do you go buy everything from commercials or advertising?

Some people have the ability to think on their own. I think TPTB know that already. Programming only works on people who are highly suggestible. Some people have those personalities where any suggestion can suddenly become plausible in their minds.

Conspiracy theorists are highly suggestible. Do they "like" a product because the commercial or advertisement tells them to "like" it on Facebook? I always say "if I liked in the first place, then I might think about liking on Facebook, but if I didn't like before, it makes me like it less now".

Programming can be easy to achieve on paper, but people are strange, sometimes they just think on their own.

Bragi
That is absolutely ludicrous...sorry, but no.

You really sure, I was approached to do that AND flashmobs for corporations while I was at uni (the example - with pictures - they gave was of a large crowd gathered around a coca-cola banner at an anti war protest).
I've also been approached to do online smear campaigns/negative SEO.

So I really don't get why you're saying its ridiculous, this was happening 9-10 years ago BEFORE there was a whitehouse administration with an Online Propaganda division

reply to post by Metallicus


Sigh...

Yes...China, Iran etc. have Government forum posters...

Our Gov? Not so much.

The net is just a different animal in the States, plus the Gov. doesn't have to engage in forum trolling and propaganda...America is as partisan and vitriolic as it has ever been...Citizens do that all by themselves and much more efficiently than the Gov. could.

The article in the OP makes no sense...it provides no evidence or sources, just weird that they try to infer that the Gov. hires hackers...which they do by the hundreds...to go online and post forum trash??? I think they have more important work for the computer geniuses/hackers than going on ATS and insulting JoeBlow51's mom or weigh in on gay marriage...please.

The US is not China or Iran...The PRIVATE SECTOR does employ forum posters...you can google for the job ads...Yes those "PR" outfits that hire forum posters do political work as well...but they get paid by Political orgs/501cs etc., not government...and mostly they get paid by INDUSTRY...To post how awesome that new Car X is or how well that laundry detergent works.

Sorry..Gov. can't keep secrets well...If they had thousands of paid posters we would know about it...and they sure as heck aren't wasting the talents of professional hackers to weigh in on gay marriage on obscure forums like the OP article suggests.

Just my 2 cents.

reply to post by MaxSteiner


You are conflating commercial paid posters...Coke rocks!! With Government posters...

Hiring folks to argue for or against a government policy is UNNECCESARY in the USA, where free speech is ubiquitous online and the public is enthusiastically vitriolic, divided and partisan on nearly every issue.

Government posters would be just a burp in the tornado...The US Public gets the job done without government needing to hire posters.

This comes at a great shock to my belief system



ps: Just wondering why some think that forums are different in the USA?
Is it because you are all very smart and clever?

I am Scottish, we invented the WORLD BABY!

I am deeply sorry, I am just in a playful mood

reply to post by Metallicus


Yeah i've been banned from cnn's DISque forum for voicing my opinion now everrything i would like to post requires a mod. and im not a troll either.

MissCoyote
reply to post by Metallicus

 

Yeah i've been banned from cnn's DISque forum for voicing my opinion now everrything i would like to post requires a mod. and im not a troll either.

When it comes to CNN, the truth is trolling.

reply to post by OneManArmy


I rreally gotta sprray my frreaking rr button on my keyboarrd LMAO.

MissCoyote
reply to post by OneManArmy

 

I rreally gotta sprray my frreaking rr button on my keyboarrd LMAO.

LOL, my last keyboard had in intermittent 'O' key. I feel your pain.

Maybe a bigger worry isn't whether there are agents derailing threads, but rather they have learnt from the conspiracy theorists and simply put out masses of alternative scenarios to derail the whole public disscusion on major issues.

There seem to be a lot of 'alternative' news stories that purposefully ignore, twist or create 'facts'

I have always questioned the veracity of claims such as this one. Is the government really paying people to "derail" threads? Given the sheer variety of opinion on the internet in general, not to mention the trolls who run rampant EVERYWHERE people gather online, WHY would any agency need to pay people to derail threads? It will happen on its own, and this is what I think happens. The reason you get so much of it on sites like this one is because of the subject matter.

Conspiracy theories, by their nature, draw in some of the not so sane types, among others, and this is probably why we see so much crap on ATS, and so many trolls. Then there is the FACT that new teenagers are coming along all the time, populating the internet more and more with trolls, so this type of activity will only increase.

There are many other things that need to be addressed as well. Why have there not been any credible people who have come forward and exposed this, if it is really going on? Why has no one come forward to say that someone tried to recruit them for such work. I have never had anything like this happen, and I have never heard of it happening, and I am from a university town, have gone to school, and been in the military. I have known a whole lot of people. If such a thing existed, surely the discussion of it would not only be online, where trolls are rampant and where the word "fact" is taken at face value.

Then there is the problem of paying these people. Knowing how these types of agencies operate, they are very leery of bringing people into secretive activities. The people they do bring in go through strenuous processes. The only time alphabet agencies will recruit "off the streets" is when they have no other alternatives. Human intelligence is mostly found overseas, although foreign students used to be heavily recruited, and probably still are, but for much more clandestine reasons. They wouldn't bring people in who could potentially expose this, and this means they would have to go through the COSTLY process of vetting these potential internet trolls, and then would have to go out of their way to disguise what they are being paid for. If they aren't, then we should see "internet troll" somewhere in the annual expenditures I would think. Unless they are using their guarded black budget.

Then there is the fact that the government just doesn't care. These agencies do not care what people "think" is going on in most cases. Sometimes however they will use public opinion to their advantage, and have swayed it in the past. Take UFO's being alien crafts for instance. The military loved that people were saying these things, because this took scrutiny off of their secret aircraft projects. I wouldn't doubt that they had a hand in spreading this information as well, and I wouldn't doubt that they did things to make it look like they knew more than they did. I actually created a thread on the topic of disinformation agents a long time ago, and although it wasn't exhaustive, I still believe that these agents are not likely to exist.

There are even more reasons than I have included here as to why it just doesn't make sense. I just cannot buy that the government would take any risk on such a project, considering there is absolutely ZERO payoff.

reply to post by Metallicus


So anyone who disagrees with you is a "shill"?

reply to post by Metallicus


This is ridiculous and your source is Natural News, the people who started the Boston Marathon bomb hoax among others.

A site like NN has to put out an article like this because if you've ever read commentary on the blogs they allow on their site, they basically get attacked constantly for how crappy their journalistic integrity is.

I've been accused of being a government disinfo agent countless times and it's laughable at best.

Metallicus

Text You've probably run into them before -- those seemingly random antagonizers who always end up diverting the conversation in an online chat room or article comment section away from the issue at hand, and towards a much different agenda. Hot-button issues like illegal immigration, the two-party political system, the "war on terror" and even alternative medicine are among the most common targets of such attackers, known as internet "trolls" or "shills," who in many cases are nothing more than paid lackeys hired by the federal government and other international organizations to sway and ultimately control public opinion.

Source

Most of us here at ATS won't be surprised that paid Goverment shills target online forums and chat rooms. This article discusses how the Government, CIA, NSA and other assorted alphabet agencies actively recruit college students to disrupt and derail online discussion on conspiracy sites. I think we all have seen certain posters that consistently try to destroy open, intelligent debate on a variety of controversial topics. There are a few on ATS that I personally suspect of being on the Goverment payroll. Do you think that this is going on or are we just being paranoid?

Conspiracy websites are typically the most heavily targeted by government officials.

Hmmm.

Trolling internet forums? This sounds like a great job, where do I apply?