How to spot MIB disinfo agents in forums

[Bobbotov]

The majority of people suspected of being "shills" or "dis-info artists" on these sites (which are the same thing imo), are probably not really. They are simply people who disagree with us So caution is suggested, and it is rarely wise to directly confront them (unless some good proofs exist first.. Which ARE possible to obtain).

Yes, it is called a witch hunt and just the level of suspicion necessary to drive this already esoteric pursuit further into problematic areas and internecine fighting.

The FE/OU community already has the laws of physics against them must they also seek other antagonists to rail against? Like I said elsewhere, the best revenge is success. Any successful demonstration of free energy or over unity will be the best defense against naysayers and the surest way to shut them up.

[the badger]

Good post Jibguy. I go by a persons posting history to get a feel if someone is a shill. All you have to do is click on their name and then show posts and if you read back you can easily get a sense if someone is a shill by all the negativity and bickering they cause. They call themselves skeptics but if there is something I don't believe in (e.g. religion) I just don't bother going to those sites or forums. I can't be bothered to waste time to argue and nitpick over something I don't believe in. If people want to believe something that's their choice. Getting paid to do it though would give some people motive.

[newbie123]

Back when i was mainly in the political blog genre, i was "recruited" for this (or specifically, they tried to). I went along with it long enough to find out what the deal was. It required doing a writing test that shows the person's "persuasive writing" ability. At least with the people who offered me work, it went like this:

A "Contractor" who is a third party "cutout", hires people to shill. The individual "free-lance" shills are usually not told who the actual "Client" is (although they can often guess because of the message). The shills are given their next "projects" (sometimes as a team), given info on how to mask their MAC numbers and change I.P.'s, and sent a URL for a forum to go to, and of course the specific "message" they are supposed to disseminate and push there. Sometimes forum names of people there are also given to "support" or '"attack"; and they are often provided background info needed for them to sound "up to speed" on the subjects discussed (lol one way to detect them is they will often use "buzz words" indiscriminately and inappropriately as a means of trying to establish "cover").

Sometimes, existing forum accounts are used by giving the new person a pre-existing account name and password. This gets tricky, as people can often exhibit a strange and innate subconscious ability to detect differences in writing style (whether this is "ESP" or simply "intuition" is hard to say, but it does exist). Those that do this, usually keep their posts as short as possible... The less said the better. 

The targets are not always open forums, but often news sites (like newspapers' online sites, or news orgs' online sites like "CNN"), that have popular "Comment" areas under the day's articles.

The intent is not always direct, but sometimes more subtle, in that the threads are often attempted to be "shaped" and "guided" by a team working together in certain directions first for a while as a "set-up" for some specific reason that later comes out. Not only that, but there is frequent use of something called

"REVERSE BIAS"

which means that the shill will often start out new on the site, posting in favor of the thing they are actually against. This can work two ways: "One", as setting a "provenance" and "bona fides" for the shill, and "Two" as a means of subtly dis'ing a subject by pretending to be for it. Often in the first case, the person will later "change sides"... LOL as a means of saying: "Gee, i was convinced by the wonderful arguments on the other side that i was completely wrong before! Thanks for saving me from my own stupidity!"

And YES, i did tell them to got to hell

Lawyers who are out of work or currently "under-employed", are often tapped for this work... Either as free lancers or contracted through their Firm. Lol i guess the idea is that they are better than average at Debate (since this is actually taught in Law School).... But the truth is, very few of these people no mater where they come from, are any good at all   When it comes down to it,  they usually "suck" and their main strategy is to often use ad hominem personal attacks and threat of derision. In fact this is a main indicator to watch for... Not that many adults will stoop to these tactics unless first provoked. But some will who are not shills lol, so it is only ONE indicator and not "proof".

Shills can be effective on less intelligent people who are confused by more arcane arguments, by re-defining the argument into a more simple context, then once that is done they use straw-man arguments "proving" the new, simpler thrust that meets their goals... Basically it is a "bait and switch" game; and classic misdirection... Tarring all the subject by defining only one part of it.... Lol, sound familiar?

"Shilling" is not a new profession (lol if it can actually be called a profession, like "egg sucking" could ), but it has changed and grown greatly since the rise of the Internet.

I have read that the U.S. military uses actual military personnel to shill directly for them as well in at least some cases. But it would be hard to prove that one i imagine

But i've said this before, and will again prolly, lol:

The majority of people suspected of being "shills" or "dis-info artists" on these sites (which are the same thing imo), are probably not really. They are simply people who disagree with us So caution is suggested, and it is rarely wise to directly confront them (unless some good proofs exist first.. Which ARE possible to obtain).

Having said that, they certainly do exist and there are probably some reading this thread right now;)  The fun part of it is, they are just "people", and are nothing to fear as they are just jerks without any personal honor sitting at their computers... And they certainly can be manipulated, the same way they try to do with others

This type of organized  "misinfo"  is probably seen more on stock market forums for than sites like this...  But I think you are mostly speculating here.    People will inadvertently do this on this site,  to the point where it seems like an organized strategy,  when it probably really is not.

[Yucca]

There's an ignore feature in this forum, you can ignore all posts of any member if you find them to be unpleasant all the time. It's not that well known, but this thread tells you how to use it:

http://www.overunity.com/index.php?topic=7488.0

I don't use it myself but I guess it could be handy for someone whos getting really wound up.

[wattsup]

Yep, good thread and important subject for these days here on this forum.

I sent a PM to @stefan last night and will see what he says, but the gist of it is "It's time to clean up this forum".

Our main recent topic being Mylow's disclosure was imply bamboozled to hell and back. Why would bonafide OU members act in this way just goes beyond any sense of logic. And this is the main reason I am pushing on getting to the bottom of this. Something smells in Camelot and it ain't the the fuzzy cheese.

If this was a general forum, one would expect many characters but this WAS an OU forum and we HAD standards and we BANNED even great minds from the forum just because of their continuous repetition of "This ain't real". We just banned them and that's the end of the story. This is where we need to be again.

I think I will look into making a new OU Web Site myself designed for only OU disclosures with a limited membership list and some membership criteria like two years presence on an existing OU forum where one can analyze the members real orientations as being fair, open minded, knowledgeable in various aspects and most importantly respectful to other members and visitors. I don't think there can be any other way around this if @stefan does not want to take measures himself or mandate someone else to do the job. Hand raised. lol

The basic premise is simple. People have a right to expect to meet in an OU forum regarding OU matters and not be continuously subjected to negative harassment which is exactly what this is. Our right to peaceful assembly and interest in OU activities is greater then any one persons right to free expression.

if you can't get with the program, you should be banned. Simple enough. Do this once or twice or three times and the rest of those members will get the message loud and clear and eventually leave on their own or act accordingly.