Getting Paid to Deny Disrupt Degrade & Deceive

Everyone on teh Interwebz is aware of trolls, trolling behavior, and people who leave comments or post in forums that seem to follow a particular agenda of disrupting, dividing, or degrading the quality of discourse on a wide variety of topics.

Many people seem to be under the assumption that most trolls are not a problem, and simply loser-basement-dwelling creeps with nothing better to do than seek cheap thrills by ruining the overall experience for those folks who are genuinely interested participants in what they think are intellectually honest, online discussions.

"...most trolls have discovered that they can't elicit anything more mild annoyance from me and thereby give up...

...The crusader-troll attempts to DISQUALIFY DISQUALIFY the blogger by presenting alternate narratives to the blog readers."

In the case of Vox Day, he's certainly correct that trolls aren't really a problem on both his Vox Popoli and Alpha Game blogs, since he is quick to identify and ban any obvious trolls that appear in his prodigious and popular comment threads.

But while the obvious trolls are easily identified as unhinged ideologues and usually true believers in the $ocial Justice Warrior cause (indoctrinated liberal progressive adherents of cultural marxism -- useful idiots,) I believe the other, more insidious types of trolls, the paid shills and psy op agents are far more pervasive and common than honest to goodness "trolls." - a.k.a. stunted individuals looking for cheap thrills by being an asshole on teh Interwebz.

These shills are trained in tactics to generate a "desirable outcome" of promoting and reinforcing an established narrative, and they are paid for by shady business fronts laundering Government agency funds in service to a covert agenda of FedGov PsyOps, all to promote and reinforce PC establishment propaganda.

In other words, their exists an entire industry of cubicle farm-desk jockeys who get paid to do nothing more than sit in a boiler room styled setup at all hours and troll teh Interwebz.

You mean I've been trolling teh Interwebz all these years for free?!?!?

Investigative journalist and author, Glenn Greenwald thinks this is one of  the most important stories to arise from Edward Snowden's whistle blowing.

Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series of articles about “dirty trick” tactics used by GCHQ’s previously secret unit, JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group). These were based on four classified GCHQ documents presented to the NSA and the other three partners in the English-speaking “Five Eyes” alliance. Today, we at the Intercept are publishing another new JTRIG document, in full, entitled “The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations.”

By publishing these stories one by one, our NBC reporting highlighted some of the key, discrete revelations: the monitoring of YouTube and Blogger, the targeting of Anonymous with the very same DDoS attacks they accuse “hacktivists” of using, the use of “honey traps” (luring people into compromising situations using sex) and destructive viruses. But, here, I want to focus and elaborate on the overarching point revealed by all of these documents: namely, that these agencies are attempting to control, infiltrate, manipulate, and warp online discourse, and in doing so, are compromising the integrity of the internet itself.

Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable.

 
 

One excellent case study of this attempt to achieve a "desirable outcome" is demonstrated by the now infamous attempted cover up and censorship related to the Quinnspiracy.*

Most denizens of teh Interwebz would have never even heard of this five-timing slut cum "game developer" if it weren't for the Striesand effect that caused the story to go viral and turn into #GamerGate. By exposing the moderators at reddit and 4chan as compromised agents, the topic of shills being paid to troll teh Interwebz became widely accepted as conspiracy fact (as opposed to regularly dismissed as "conspiracy theory.")

During this entire debacle, the Vulture of Critique blog, linked to an article that may have revealed at least one possible source for the seemingly inexplicable and sudden heavy-handed moderation at 4chan:

In early 2008, the owner/administrator of 4chan was approached by representatives af the Arizona ICAC in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Justice and federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

The agents approached 4chan’s administrator following a year-long investigation into the site. Of concern to the Doj, ICE, and AZ-ICAC representatives was the routine trafficking of Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) images and links on 4chan.org’s /b/ board among others.

So agents of FedGov approached 4chan regarding allegations of regular trafficking of child porn occurring on 4chan's servers. After some "negotiations" with 4chan to cooperate in a "honeypot" sting operation that did not get the desired results, the FedGov actually seized the physical hardware of 4chan and set it up in their own controlled facility to supposedly catch kiddie porn hustlers.

Beginning shortly after the cooperation between 4chan’s administrator and law enforcement began, the administrator of 4chan was advised by the law enforcement agencies working the case to stay off of /b/ completely. Later he was ordered to remote all “civilian’ moderators/janitors from /b/ and to hand the /b/ moderation accounts exclusively to the law enforcement agents working 4chan – so they could more quickly trap and take down CSA materials.

Finally. and also earlier this year 4chan’s servers WERE effectively “seized.” They were moved out of the old data center in Los Angeles and placed into a nearby facility directly controlled by an unnamed federal law enforcement agency. There’s now just plain gigabit Ethernet fiber between the web site’s current tier 1 transit provider and the 4chan servers inside that factlity with no commercial hosting provider involved to speak of. This I have no further information on or what the implications are.

So, folks, if 4chan is now actually a FedGov sting operation since at least 2008, what does that imply given 4chan's apparent cooperation in the collusion of all the other Gamer-Journo sites and Reddit's attempted cover up of the "Quinnspiracy?"

Does all this sound utterly ludicrous and too fantastic to be true? Take heed...as previously noted, in his first term, President Barack Obama appointed Cass Sunstein as the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

Sunstein advocates that the Government’s stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups.”  He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called “independent” credible voices to bolster the Government’s messaging (on the ground that those who don’t believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government).

It's no crackpot theory that the Federal Government of USA Inc. is engaged in psy-op mindwars on teh Interwebz. It's an openly admitted policy from an administration official who publicly advocated for such measures before he was appointed head of an Executive Branch Office.

Exciting Career Opportunities with the NSA-DHS-DoD-CIA-OIRA CyberWar Industrial Complex!

But it's not just FedGov of USAInc. that's doing this. We are living in the age of converging Globalism. Note the following from The Secret Playbook of Internet Trolls:

It is well-known that foreign  governments and large companies troll online...

I still remember quite clearly the first time I encountered the idea of paid shills infesting the Interwebz. It was a piece entitled I Was A Paid Internet Shill that was originally posted at the Above Top Secret Forum, that quickly went viral. I remember when I first read it, that I didn't quite believe it at the time.

Despite the Above Top Secret forum moderators locking the thread and declaring the original post was a hoax...it seems to me that ATS got converged and ordered to do some damage control. Note the link to the Truthseeker blog had the following updates posted to it:

Update 1/12/2013: CLN has received a takedown notice asking us to remove this article on the basis that “It is libelous and utterly false” from someone claiming to be a legal agent of Above Top Secret’s parent company. We are currently investigating and will post status updates as they become available. The original thread now appears to have vanished from Above Top Secret’s website.

Update 1/17/2013: We have requested clarification regarding the takedown request and have not received a response. We will provide updates on any new developments.

Somebody somewhere didn't like this "hoax" existing on the web. In 2012 when I first read the confession, it sounded ludicrous and improbable. At the present, I now believe the original posting is probably true in it's entirety. The tactics and training described in the post certainly fits the modus operandi of the more obvious cases of shill trolling one can find almost anywhere on teh Interwebz in 2016:

If a poster wrote something close to “X,” we were supposed to respond with something close to “Y.” “You have to mix it up a bit, though,” said my trainer. “Otherwise it gets too obvious. Learn to use a thesaurus.” This section also contained a number of hints for de-railing conversations that went too far away from what we were attempting. These strategies included various forms of personal attacks, complaining to the forum moderators, smearing the characters of our opponents, using images and icons effectively, and even dragging the tone of the conversation down with sexual innuendo, links to pornography, or other such things. “Sometimes we have to fight dirty,” or trainer told us. “Our opponents don’t hesitate to, so we can’t either.”

Apparently, the lying and deceit and acting like an asshole became too much for our ex-shill whistleblower to deal with:

After a while of doing this, I started to feel bad. Not because of the views I was pushing (as I said, I was first apolitical, then pro-Israel), but because of the dishonesty involved. If my arguments were so correct, I wondered, why did we have to do this in the first place? Shouldn’t truth propagate itself naturally, rather than through, well…propaganda? And who was behind this whole operation, anyway? Who was signing my paychecks? The stress of lying to my parents and friends about being a “consultant” was also getting to me. Finally, I said enough was enough. I quit in September 2011. Since then I’ve been working a series of unglamorous temp office jobs for lower pay. But at least I’m not making my living lying and heckling people who come online to express their views and exercise freedom of speech.

A professional troll had an attack of conscience? Stranger things have happened....

In conclusion, we must strive to remember that no matter what job any of us do, no matter how hard, laborious or dirty we may get to earn our scrip wages to survive in our Brave New World Order, there is always a worse job than yours. I certainly couldn't live with myself if my main vocation was being a paid troll.





Relevant Links:

Confession of a Hillary Clinton Shill

Astroturfing Information Megathread

Dispelling Internet Disinformation Tactics – Debunking the Debunkers

Disinformation Strategies Exposed – Please Don’t Feed The Trolls

Paid Internet Trolls

 

* This post has been sitting in my draft folder for almost two years - hence the links to old articles and citing old news events like the beginning stages of #GamerGate.

I had forgotten about this draft until reading Vox's recent post at Alpha Game about dealing with trolls, which reminded me I had an unfinished post on the topic.

In Dependency USA Inc.

IN DISTRESS, July 4th, 2016.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for the People to refuse and resist the internationalist Powers That Be to effect a systematic program to gradually and inexorably dissolve the ethnic, cultural, religious and moral traditions of the People that once forged the States and Nations of a just and moral Civilization, to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which entitle them to a decent respect, to lay bare their designs in administering social justice and collectivist solidarity to achieve their vision of world peace under a single union beholden to international governance and population control through total information awareness.

We hold these manufactured truths to be self-delusion, that all women, minorities, races, creeds, genders and sexual orientations are officially designated as EQUAL, that they are endowed by their democratically elected regional representatives and their Corporate sponsors and lobbyists with certain unalienable Rights, that the underlying motive for promoting such is to disenfranchise and dispossess the aboriginal and naturalized inhabitants; for importation of foreign consumers and human resources imbued with naturalized rights; among these are the right to receive affirmative preference over native populace in all commercial, judicial, legal affairs, including entitlement program access.

That to secure these rights to effect total market domination of the People, Executive Boards are instituted amongst the Franchises, deriving their unjust powers from the consent of the Corporate lobbies and Political Action Committees who fund them.

That whenever any Form of Government-Industrial-Complex becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the Shareholders to alter or to abolish the executive board under the cover of meaningless exercises of Democracy, and to institute new Administrative Organizations, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Executive Pensions, Company Shares and Severance Packages, regardless of the state of the current market and the financial, physical, and spiritual health of it's consumer bases.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Executive Boards long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that market segments are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, T.H.E.Y. take it as their right, their duty, to outsource such inefficient operations, and to reorganize and provide new Human Resources and Capital for their future security of a Multi-national corporate entity that takes primacy over the former organization known as the united States of America --Such has been the sufferance of these Franchises; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Corporate Culture. The history of the office of the Chief Executive Officer, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of a hostile take over of these Fifty Franchises and assorted subsidiaries and affiliates. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

T.H.E.Y. have refused to enforce Laws and the Bill of Rights in the Nations foundational documents, those that are the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

T.H.E.Y. have abrogated and rescinded many of the provisions that formerly guaranteed the safety, security and the pursuit of happiness amongst the various niche markets of consumers; and when other laws such as border security and strict requirements for naturalized citizenship for non-native migrants have been upended, T.H.E.Y. have utterly neglected to attend to them.

T.H.E.Y. have refused to pass other Laws for the protection of large segments of People, unless those People would relinquish their Second Amendment right to bear arms free of onerous regulations, a right inestimable to the People and formidable to tyrants only.

T.H.E.Y. have called together administrative agencies and Federalized entitites at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing the people into compliance with their measures.

T.H.E.Y. have dissolved former institutions founded on the promotion of the common good of the nation repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness their invasions on the rights of the People.

T.H.E.Y. has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have denied to the People at large for their exercise; the Nation remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

T.H.E.Y. has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Law Enforcement of detaining undocumented Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of vast tracts of Federal Lands to restrict them from usage by the general populace at large.
        
T.H.E.Y. have obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing to Assent to Laws for establishing the checks and balances between Executive, Legislative and Judiciary powers.

T.H.E.Y. have made Judges dependent on their will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

T.H.E.Y. have erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of bureaucrats and administrative agencies to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

T.H.E.Y. have kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies of militarized Police Forces with the purchased Consent of our corrupt legislatures.

T.H.E.Y. have affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power, and prepared to initiate martial law across the entire land at the stroke of the Chief Executive Officer's pen.

T.H.E.Y. have combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed, militarized police forces and Federal Agencies among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders and tresspasses which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For outsourcing our trade and manufacturing to all parts of the world:

For imposing onerous and privacy violating Tax structures on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the Bill of Rights found in the founding Constitution's Amendments:

For transporting our soldiers  beyond Seas to export democracy by militarized force to secure Central Banking Usury and Fiat Financing Operations; For abolishing the free System of American Constitutional Laws, establishing therein an Arbitrary administrative bureaucratic leviathan, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule of despotic tyranny into these States:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our culture and society:

For suspending our own traditions of faith and commonly held morality, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

T.H.E.Y. have abdicated Government here, by declaring us as terrorists and potential insurgent threats and waging War against us.

T.H.E.Y. have plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our People.

T.H.E.Y. have at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

T.H.E.Y. constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive by covert intelligence agencies and trained to bear Arms against our Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands, so as to offer justification for the further imposition of despotism and tyranny.

T.H.E.Y. have excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and have endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless criminals from third world masses, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions, we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. An organization whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a failed commercial venture, is unfit to be the consumer goods supplier to the nation's various niche markets.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish, Canadian, European and Australian brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by the Non-Governmental Organizations and the International Montary Fund of the United Nations to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us all. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here.

We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Shareholders of the United States of America Inc., in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Franchises, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Franchises and their associated subsidiaries are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the United Nations Inc. at Rockefeller Plaza in New York and the Corporate Headquarters of USA Inc. in the District of Columbia, and that all political connection between them and all Fifty Franchises, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent Franchises, they have full Power to Secede, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent Franchises may of right do.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.