Are people paid to "steer public opinion on ATS"?

Link 1


This took a minute to find. Sorry not much time today.

I was speaking in general about the accusations against members or ATS in general and they do pop up often here. Unlike many though, your thread is a calm discussion and my compliments on that.

Either way this topic gets a LOT of play here, both in individual post and threads about this topic.

My real point is that; does it really matter one way or the other? I also believe people are wrongly accused more often than not. Too often people are labeled simply because they disagree.

There are multiple reasons I think for this. Number one being a belief by some that if someone does not agree they must be here to spread disinformation. Nonsense of course and I believe most see that.

Another is that many here do believe in some or one topic here, while they think many other topics are fantasy or the angry ramblings of someone having what amounts to a temper tantrum.

In many cases where this issue comes up, both sides of the debate are out of line and both probably believe the other is the "disinformation agent". It is also used as a derogatory slur to try and get even, if you will, at someone they can not convince to come over to their side.

If there are paid people here, I think most are from other sites and very few if any are from any government. As I think someone else mentioned there does seem to be a glaring example recently; China. It is hard to find another explanation.

One thing that always bothered me about the supposed monitoring by any government is the logistics. Yes they have programs to find certain words or phrases, but where on this earth could they get enough people to sort through them and how do they keep them quiet?

Another thing that comes to mind is we place to much importance at times on topics. They may be of importance to some of us, but probably have little or no interest to a government. Does anyone really believe people are being paid to interfere with discussions about Reptilians, Soul Catchers on the Moon and the like?

Forgive my poorly thought out posts today and any spelling problems as I have my better half staring at me wondering why I'm not on the mountain of work I have. I'd better sign off for today

Originally posted by eye open doors

I was a message board that was mostly liberal, and a group of conservatives waged war. Due to the liberal slant of the administration they allowed the conservative trolls to remain. They flamed people constantly, they posted exagerated threads, they ganged up on people.

Finally the admins closed the site down due to this. I followed one of the most flagrant of conservative trolls back to his message board. he was smug with some sort of ego boost. He was a hypacrite. Allowing him to get away with his actions only enable his poor behavior.

People like him get a thrill from the attention. So the greatest defense in such a situation is to ignore their offense.

If the administration could not handle their users when they got out of hand, they should not have been running a forum in the first place.

reply to post by Blaine91555


Wow, that topic was made almost two years ago. It's interesting to see that 9/11 topic derailing was going on that long ago and still continues to this day. There must be some very determined people out there.

If the administration could not handle their users when they got out of hand, they should not have been running a forum in the first place.

They refused to make examples of or ban the rabble rousers. Like I said, they were very liberal. Many of the people at the message board would complain to the admins about the actions of the offensive group. It got so bad they just got sick of it.

The reason i bring all this up is because flaming is a very effective way to derail a topic.

Check out this article:

www.infowars.com...

The Pentagon has just been given $30 Billion dollars to "treat the Internet as an enemy weapons system."

Originally posted by freight tomsen
Check out this article:

www.infowars.com...

The Pentagon has just been given $30 Billion dollars to "treat the Internet as an enemy weapons system."

Oh man, I don't like where that is going.

I used to post on the 911 conspiracy forum quite frequently and still do occasionally. That is a topic that really matters in the sense that if the 9/11 truthers were to convince enough people that the Bush administration engineered the 9/11 attacks, court cases and jail terms could conceivably follow. I believe that there are paid disinfo agents working that forum.

The OP pointed to a couple of giveaways; egregiously illogical statements, revisiting topics in a manner that would suggest they had never been discussed before and ignoring the results of those discussions. My own personal favorite is the alleged (if not false) "proven fact" stated in a bombastic manner and unsourced.

The shills in "discussions" like that have no interest in discussing anything. They mean business and often the first and last order of business is the ad hominem attack.

This is quite different from the style of the congenitally incredulous debunker, who might seem like a blockhead, but with whom I have no quarrel or complaint.

It's a good thing though. It shows that the perps are worried. As the CIT guys say "We ain't playing."

[edit on 7-5-2008 by ipsedixit]

Originally posted by SonicInfinity

reply to post by IchiNiSan

 

Sending a U2U with people you don't agree with an are currently in a heated argument with is good so that you can keep the tensions down, and yeah, your avatar is pretty truthful.

Of course there are always some individuals who will simply never listen and keep on insisting that you are "brainwashed", "paid propaganda and/or disinfo agent", and so on.

Actually I think ATS is an extreme hostile environment towards certain groups of people. As a Chinese posting in ATS I think I have encountered the most outrageous accusations from "ignorance-denying" members, many I doubt even tried the effort to read what is posted. Seems like not much respect and credit are given to people who share a totally different opinion, or when there is a preset opinion about certain topics. You show them the other side of the coin, and you are labelled to be a "paid agent" of whatever organization.

reply to post by IchiNiSan

Maybe you are just being overly sensitive.

I've had numerous arguments and disagreements with people in these forums and have never been accused of being a paid dis-info agent once.

People who are accused of that don't simply disagree with someone else. They couch their arguments in a lot of dirty debating tricks, ignore arguments put forward by their antagonists or simply belittle those arguments without confronting the details.

However, having said that I certainly don't envy anyone (and I don't refer to you here.) who might be a paid apologist for the Chinese Communist Party. It would be like defending a chef in a kitchen who has finally turned out a decent meal after having wrecked the kitchen several times, shot the sous-chefs from time to time and insisted that the patrons can only have one family pet, of a certain size.

You caught us! The game is up!

I'm being paid to spout extreme right-wing rhetoric by the VRWC (Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy).

Damn, now I need to find a new job.

From what i can see at this site id say that journalists and documentry writers are using this site to see what stories 'get people intrested'.

Theres bound to be people here sewing the seeds of disinformation..hoping we'll take the bait and run away with the story..thus doing thier jobs for them.

It wouldnt supprise me if certain agencies use sites like this to conduct research into how rumours are passed about ...

[edit on 8-5-2008 by VitalOverdose]

Paid shills are real.psychological warfare is real.Bush used a lot of it.Rumsfeld,Rice,Cheny,several generals ,all went around to different media organizations to create the idea of Iraq being a threat so as to create the illusion of the idea being as popular as they could make it..Many people will just follow the crowd and not do any critical thinking,so you can make them believe just about any thing if you create the illusion of a popular opinion.This is why it took so long for many to wake up to the lies.Some people however just feel a need to defend what they would consider an authority figure or organization.If a cop in your town beat up a suspect or hit someone with his car,there would be those defending them before they even knew any facts.The whispers would be all over the town with people saying"He must have done something wrong".If you are a free thinker the bs is something that is unavoidable.I had chemtrail debunkers try to tell me what kind of aircraft i was seeing.According to them it was routine commercial flights.They did not even have any facts to make a judgement on what kind of aircraft it was.They also never defend their position,because after all i am crazy and since i am the one who says they are real,i must prove mine.I also never said they were real.i only said i thought it was possible that we could be sprayed with potentialy hazardous substances and they are not telling us about it.There method of attack is often to treat you as if you are inferior to them and to tell everyone their definition of what you think and what your opinions are.I have been told a lot of things about what my opinion is, that i never said or even thought for that matter.

Here is my response from another thread

"Doubt totally that it is owned or controlled by CIA, NSA, alphabet - would be counter productive - like most of these sites it would be well monitored with the odd disinformation or propganda - of this there can be no doubt - nor would there be any way of the owners / operators to know.

I have done extensive research into Government psyops and propaganda using companies such as hills and knowlton, rendon, all stemming from edward Bernays and Lippman - and do not think for a second that there is a massive campaign being waged for your hearts and minds through extremely nefarious sources - however it would be utterly counter productive to OWN a site like this. It would be totally obvious and fail immediately.

The amount of psyops done on this site should be immediately apparent through the quantity of counter information put forward regarding Israel and the Bush asministrations activites in the middle east when any free thinking - realistic individual knows how the truth of the situation."

[edit on 12-5-2008 by audas]

Originally posted by audas

I have done extensive research into Government psyops and propaganda using companies such as hills and knowlton, rendon, all stemming from edward Bernays and Lippman - and do not think for a second that there is a massive campaign being waged for your hearts and minds through extremely nefarious sources

I have done extensive research into those subjects/people as well, but my research proved the opposite conclusion to yours. How can you read Bernays and "not think for a second that there is a massive campaign being waged for your hearts and minds through nefarious sources."

How can you turn on a TV or open a magazine and not "think for a second" you're intentionally being manipulated/molded to suit an elite's agenda? Did you miss this quote in Berney's book "Propaganda'?

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in a democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power in our country … We are governed, our mind’s are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of … we are dominated by a relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind and who harness social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world … It remains a fact in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by this relatively small number of persons… As civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented.”