I'm convinced...now more than ever

a reply to: loam

Indeed! Or...something which doesn't meet the eye, literally AND metaphorically!

a reply to: dave5426

I don't see a lot of evidence to support this, else why would so many of them be asking the questions they do?

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
a reply to: dave5426

I don't see a lot of evidence to support this, else why would so many of them be asking the questions they do?

If a 3 letter agency bought it, you can bet they would have canned the mod team and brought in their own lackeys. I think the owner is being given too much credit.

originally posted by: Zarniwoop
a reply to: whereisdagan

If the mods allow it and the members want it, I'd be happy to do a pen test on the entire domain and network area free of charge

You'll have to find and ask the owner about that (good luck).

Moderators have no voice in these matters.

This post has been approved by Gregory Bateson.

If you are wondering what is being done to you, ATS...

Start there.

Things like this aren't directly owned.

I'm sure most here on ATS realize Google is/was a CIA and NSA project.

They don't directly own it but they have enough established connections to influence the company.

The degree in which influence can vary from AI scanning posts, to hiring a few posters to make certain view points seem popular, and providing coincidental economic opportunities. The influence is never direct but is done through supporting third parties. (Like Soros donating to all the AG campaigns).

If you look at all the 9/11 threads, there was very little political talk. Can you imagine if you tried to start that type of thread now? It would quickly be killed by the political "pros" on this website. Within 10 pages it would be about abortion/trans rights/guns rights.

These pros weren't hired directly to destroy the community of ATS but they were part of the overall plan to make every situation something people had to take sides about.

For sure ad blockers were part of the conspiracy. They wanted to make sure all the revenue was only obtainable on large easily controlled and monitored platforms.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I suspected that there was more than one person operating and using the 'darko' account, and had assumed that it was a husband and wife team.

However there remains a possibility that more people were communicating via that account and were maintaining the site, and that they were very skilled at being deceptive, probably through running similar sites for some time.

The "Lou Troglodyte" banner ad was, to me, just weird. Like a showoff saying they were trolling us all, without letting the cat out of the bag, as to motive.

As to SSL certificate, my browser is showing as HTTPS and I haven't seen any certificate expiration notification.

I had been advocating the use of SSL for some years prior to the site's adoption of secure sockets and if I am recalling correctly, it was some time at the start of darko's posts when the site started using it.

While secure sockets do prevent 3rd party spying into online content, the local browser and the site itself still have unrestricted and unencrypted to the content, much like with a VPN, so if law enforcement, espionage, or corporates cotrol the site, they are free to mine data from it.

It has long been suspected that US three letter agencies are behind the site. To me, this seems rational and would explain how the site continues to stay up, without advertising revenue or subscription (actually, now I think of it, that may be because the browser I use includes fairly robust ad-blocking, and I'm too lazy to switch it all off just to see?).

I also suspect that the database, while quite old and containing some 'poisoned data' as old dB's tend to accumulate, is actually being maintained, to some extent The truncated views into older posts have been done deliberately to speed up the site, but I believe the posts and other data/metadata are still there.

The changes to the referencing/metadata links (the stuff that automatically appears when you edit a post, and which seems to have changed yet again between 22-May-2024 and 23-May-2024, and then re-appeared again later on 23-May - check the edits on the posts in this thread) which seems to have started after the big crash, are in my belief an attempt to port the old database to a new instance/engine and shows that there are ongoing efforts to maintain the data.

Also, someone posted something about WordPress, but looking at this site's viewable code, I don't think any of it is compatible with WordPress. It looks very much like they used some other (and much older) content management system as it's base, but it has been significantly customized since then.

a reply to: chr0naut

This site s not ran through WordPress. If it was, we wouldn’t be in this situation. That’s why the site wasn’t worth as much when being sold. It’s built on ancient code developed by SO himself. This is why it was incredibly stupid for Darko to ban him.

originally posted by: KKLOCO
a reply to: chr0naut

This site s not ran through WordPress. If it was, we wouldn’t be in this situation. That’s why the site wasn’t worth as much when being sold. It’s built on ancient code developed by SO himself. This is why it was incredibly stupid for Darko to ban him.

I think I am seeing what I believe is maintenance on the back end. Even just today.

The tags on posts and other things on the site look to me like an attempt to standardize the data, possibly to port it.

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: KKLOCO
a reply to: chr0naut

This site s not ran through WordPress. If it was, we wouldn’t be in this situation. That’s why the site wasn’t worth as much when being sold. It’s built on ancient code developed by SO himself. This is why it was incredibly stupid for Darko to ban him.

I think I am seeing what I believe is maintenance on the back end. Even just today.

The tags on posts and other things on the site look to me like an attempt to standardize the data, possibly to port it.

Interesting. Do you mind posting screen shots of what you’re talking about?

originally posted by: KKLOCO

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: KKLOCO
a reply to: chr0naut

This site s not ran through WordPress. If it was, we wouldn’t be in this situation. That’s why the site wasn’t worth as much when being sold. It’s built on ancient code developed by SO himself. This is why it was incredibly stupid for Darko to ban him.

I think I am seeing what I believe is maintenance on the back end. Even just today.

The tags on posts and other things on the site look to me like an attempt to standardize the data, possibly to port it.

Interesting. Do you mind posting screen shots of what you’re talking about?

I don't think posting such screenshots would be wise.

EDITED TO ADD

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originally posted by: chr0naut
I also suspect that the database, while quite old and containing some 'poisoned data' as old dB's tend to accumulate, is actually being maintained, to some extent The truncated views into older posts have been done deliberately to speed up the site, but I believe the posts and other data/metadata are still there.

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean, could you explain it?

Thanks in advance.

The changes to the referencing/metadata links (the stuff that automatically appears when you edit a post, and which seems to have changed yet again between 22-May-2024 and 23-May-2024, and then re-appeared again later on 23-May - check the edits on the posts in this thread) which seems to have started after the big crash, are in my belief an attempt to port the old database to a new instance/engine and shows that there are ongoing efforts to maintain the data.

Are you talking about the strange "reason for edit" at the bottom of the edited posts? That's an old bug.

originally posted by: loam
Something of value is derived from the site.

If someone is paying for the expenses, but you're not seeing an obvious revenue stream, you can bet whatever is "valuable" serves an objective you probably won't like.

I have 2 favorite adages that have served me well when searching for truth:

1 - Follow the money.

2 - Cui bono? Who benefits?

originally posted by: DontTreadOnMe

originally posted by: KKLOCO

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: KKLOCO
a reply to: chr0naut

This site s not ran through WordPress. If it was, we wouldn’t be in this situation. That’s why the site wasn’t worth as much when being sold. It’s built on ancient code developed by SO himself. This is why it was incredibly stupid for Darko to ban him.

I think I am seeing what I believe is maintenance on the back end. Even just today.

The tags on posts and other things on the site look to me like an attempt to standardize the data, possibly to port it.

Interesting. Do you mind posting screen shots of what you’re talking about?

I don't think posting such screenshots would be wise.

Why not, DTOM?

I'm curious. Do you believe the information could be used to infiltrate the back end?

It doesn't seem like there would be anything dangerous in posting some screenshots that the member saw/experienced.

originally posted by: ArMaP

originally posted by: chr0naut
I also suspect that the database, while quite old and containing some 'poisoned data' as old dB's tend to accumulate, is actually being maintained, to some extent The truncated views into older posts have been done deliberately to speed up the site, but I believe the posts and other data/metadata are still there.

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean, could you explain it?

The "Top" and "New" listings of posts used to scroll down way further than they do now.

And it seems to be time delimited, not number of posts delimited because if I look at my recent posts list, and haven't posted for a while, there's hardly anything in it beyond a week or two and the list is quite a lot shorter than it used to be.

Another thing that I just noticed is that if I try to scroll past the end of recent lists, I get what appears to get several screen refreshes between the circling dots and finally when it fails I get a number of "end of auto-load" messages towards the bottom if the page. That might have been happening for a while, but I don't recall the text.

Thanks in advance.

The changes to the referencing/metadata links (the stuff that automatically appears when you edit a post, and which seems to have changed yet again between 22-May-2024 and 23-May-2024, and then re-appeared again later on 23-May - check the edits on the posts in this thread) which seems to have started after the big crash, are in my belief an attempt to port the old database to a new instance/engine and shows that there are ongoing efforts to maintain the data.

Are you talking about the strange "reason for edit" at the bottom of the edited posts? That's an old bug.

If it's an old bug, then it resurfaced after the access to existing ATS accounts were restored by ghost (to my recollection).

I had assumed that they were trying to re-index everything by some new tag, and the bug was showing that new tag in the "reason for edit" and other locations (like in the 'Registered' field under the avatar image to the left of posts). I assumed that things were being changed because its format, location, and what it got stuck-to was different at different times.

Even if you go back just in this thread alone you'll see differences in the "reason for edit" tags on messages.

Come on people...

Site gets sold.

A bit before the database issue, there were posts in the tech section asking about SQL queries.

Then db goes down, old mod accounts get locked out, with some convenient weird posts coming from some of those accounts, as if there was some malevolent actions occurring...

A "ghost" restores access to a select few mods, at least one of which invested money in the purchase of the site...

Ownership transfer complete, in spectacular conspiracy fashion.

And no, this isn't WordPress. PhpBB maybe, or something close to that with some custom mods.

originally posted by: n08ody
Come on people...

Site gets sold.

A bit before the database issue, there were posts in the tech section asking about SQL queries.

Then db goes down, old mod accounts get locked out, with some convenient weird posts coming from some of those accounts, as if there was some malevolent actions occurring...

A "ghost" restores access to a select few mods, at least one of which invested money in the purchase of the site...

Ownership transfer complete, in spectacular conspiracy fashion.

And no, this isn't WordPress. PhpBB maybe, or something close to that with some custom mods.

Signed up just to make this post? You’ve obviously been intently watching. Elaborate please. We are far past cryptic texts.

It's like over seas now I believe.

a reply to: whereisdagan

that's why I'm a lurker. Been here since the beginning and have only posted a handful of times.

a reply to: KKLOCO