Spotting potential government infiltrates and disinformation

Hello everyone,

This is not a personal attack on these member, but there is strong reason for us to believe that certain members may be some sort of government infiltrate/plant to raise doubt and ridicule conspiracy theories. I have refrained from revealing the suspected member's username for fear of the thread being misinterpreted as a personal attack on this member.

There is a member with 4000+ posts, the last 800 of which have all entirely been posted in the 9/11 section. All of the posts from this member are aimed at supporting the official 9/11 story as well as (sometimes irrationally) ridiculing and raising doubt about the alternative theories and suspicions that have been raised over 9/11, even when presented with reasonable and suggestive evidence. I don't know if all 4000+ of this members posts were made in the 9/11 section (because it only shows the past 800), but given that this member has only posted in that one section since september of last year it may be likely that this user has only ever posted in that section to raise doubt about 9/11 theories. It is strange that such a person would come to a forum which discusses conspiracy theories, in my opinion this user would be better suited if he were to join a forum which discusses and affirms, with no suspicion, only the official version of events of 9/11, but instead this user comes here and puts forth an unusual, extreme effort to seemingly try to change minds and raise doubts about alternative 9/11 theories.

In 2008 a then Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein co-authored a 30 page paper on conspiracy theories which aims at describing how conspiracy theories come about, how they are potentially dangerous to government, and recommends methods on how the government can undermine these theories. In the beginning of the paper the author(s) create a list of conspiracy theories that turned out to be true, later in the paper though, they use words like "kook" and "quasi beliefs" to describe people that believe in conspiracy theories, so, there is a inherent bias and contradiction in this report, at first they are affirming that certain conspiracies in the past were true, but then they seem to imply and suppose that any conspiracy theory in the present must be false.

So what do they suggest be done about the conspiracy theories? Cognitive inflitration and cognitive diversity.

3. Cognitive infiltration

Rather than taking the continued existence of the hard core as a constraint, and addressing itself solely to the third-party mass audience, government might undertake (legal) tactics for breaking up the tight cognitive clusters of extremist theories, arguments and rhetoric that are produced by the hard core and reinforce it in turn. One promising tactic is cognitive infiltration of extremist groups.

Cognitive diversity

Informational and reputational cascades, group polarization, and selection effects suggest that the generation of ever-more-extreme views within these groups can be dampened or reversed by the introduction of cognitive diversity. We suggest a role for government efforts, and agents, in introducing such diversity. Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action.

In one variant, government agents would openly proclaim, or at least make no effort to conceal, their institutional affiliations. A recent newspaper story recounts that Arabic-speaking Muslim officials from the State Department have participated in dialogues at radical Islamist chat rooms and websites in order to ventilate arguments not usually heard among the groups that cluster around those sites, with some success. In another variant, government officials would participate anonymously or even with false identities.

Many of you may be well aware of the amount of ridicule and debunking going on in certain forums, especially the aliens & ufo's section, and especially as well as the 9/11 section. That report above was written in 2008, one of the co-authors of that paper, Cass Sunstein, who is now the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under president Obama. Mr. Sunstein has been in a direct position to implement such policies and tactics as outlined in the external text and I am suggesting that this is exactly what is going on in these forums now.

My recommendation for spotting these potential government infiltrates is to be aware and keep note of users who seem to only make posts that are aimed towards debunking and raising doubt, and who particularly seem to have a sort of bias against the topics discussed. If these users were not interested in or do not believe in the conspiracy subjects, why would they go so far out of their way to post for months and years raising doubt and debunking of topics they don't even acknowledge or believe in? I suggest there may be another reason for SOME of these users for being on this forum, perhaps as was mentioned in the paper, cognitive infiltration and diversity to suppress ideas and to prevent ideas from spreading and becoming even more popular and considered.

I do not suggest or believe that all of the doubters and debunkers on this forum are government infiltrates, I leave open the possibility that some of these members may simply enjoy the challenge of spotting truly phony and erroneous information for the sake of exercising their intellect, but, this is one of the more popular conspiracy forums and I think it would be foolish to assume that our government is not aware of it's existence and has not taken measures to counter the theories and opinions being produced here.

So to summarize, you may be able to spot potential government infiltrates on this forum by observing their post behavior and noting whether or not the user tends to lean overwhelmingly towards debunking, skepticism and raising doubt. This is confirmed that they use tactics like this in online social media overseas in middle eastern countries to try and influence more pro-western opinions, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were doing it here as well.



Source for external text: papers.ssrn.com...

im readying this forum for 3 years now and its nothing new about your finding.
In every goverment important threeds im finding few post defending official story with no sens claims ,
posted by thise sime members.
Just ignere them.

I think most here can spot "trolls" and "shrills" quite easily.
Personally I just ignore them. They have absolutely no influence on my views.
Careful and intense scrutiny of and accumulation of knowledge with an open mind = "The Truth"
To me ,911 is and will always be a false flag operation and demolition cover up.
Peace

I've always assumed there were some accounts on here whose purpose was to keep certain issues hot, which is great for generating buzz around your site.

EDIT: I think you can see this in certain threads whose flags shoot through the roof not long after they are posted. They might not even have much behind them.

I agree with the other posters. It is patently obvious who the trolls and shills are. They persuade no one, and by constantly trolling on one forum, they expose themselves. By toeing the government line and dancing to the official tune, one has to ask, why are they here on a conspiracy site? Do they have no life, or do they get paid by the post?

There is denying ignorance, and then there is perpetuating it. We can tell the difference.

Originally posted by FissionSurplus
I agree with the other posters. It is patently obvious who the trolls and shills are.

This site covers such a range of topics, it's quite possible to to believe in the 9/11 conspiracy say but not in chemtrails - or vice versa. A keen mind does not have to buy into 'conspiracy everything'. That would make one a conspiracy sheeple .
As for those who naysay everything well I've not noticed anyone but it's quite possible they registered just to mock and have a go - they don't have to be a government plant! On the subject of which it's just as possible that any such plant might work from the other side of the spectrum - ie coming up with the sort of insane garbage that discredits sites like this.
But really what does it matter anyway? All arguments are there to be picked apart and agreed with or not. They will stand or fall on their own merit.

On a now defunct board that I used to frequent there was an incident where a user with a gross amount of posts and threads that had seemingly parted ways by not posting for several months (no reason given) suddenly had returned and their writing, interests, threads, and rebuttals had changed in such a way that long time posters raised an eye to it. The thread that had resulted from this insinuated that the original poster's account had been hacked by and/or sold to a shill. This thread reminded me of that one from almost a decade ago elsewhere.

reply to post by Lexx790


BS ATS members are extremely bad at spotting trolls and jsust call everyone that doesnt agree with their brand of nonsense a shill.

OP youre silly. You really think thee govt. cares what a bunch of burnouts thinks about 9/11? Do you realize how fun it is to watch morons who believe every ufo video authentic squirm when confronted wirth reason?

Originally posted by Domo1
reply to post by Lexx790

 

BS ATS members are extremely bad at spotting trolls and jsust call everyone that doesnt agree with their brand of nonsense a shill.

OP youre silly. You really think thee govt. cares what a bunch of burnouts thinks about 9/11? Do you realize how fun it is to watch morons who believe every ufo video authentic squirm when confronted wirth reason?

Huh? I hope this is just a bad case of sarcasm with very poor grammar too boot.

I thought the OP was on the money and I agree with the few people here that have posted that yes they are usually easy to spot.

In most cases it is over the top obvious and you know it the second you read the post.

S&F
Regards, Iwinder

reply to post by Domo1


Of course the government cares about what people think about 9/11! There are tons of people out there that have doubts and concerns over the official story and it is of the utmost concern for the government because, you have a bunch of people that suspect it was a false flag attack or that they were using it to justify invading a country for their oil, and people lose confidence in their government, people stop believing what their government tells them and people become skeptical about their government. For the govt it's bad either way you look at it because it encourages protest, revolution and demand for change. There is nothing more dangerous for a standing government than to have a wave of cynicism and distrust flood over it's own citizens, it breeds protest and revolution, and consequently threatens their power. They absolutely do care about what people think of 9/11 because if this spread to enough people in this country there would probably be waves of protest and demand for a new investigation, that would definitely be bad for them.

So I hope you can understand why a government would want to infiltrate a forum that discusses these things in order to slow down or stop an idea or theory from spreading, if enough people caught onto the 9/11 truther movement it would be very bad for certain people in power.