Look no further~ The Gentleperson's Guide To Forum Spies

Originally posted by PlanetXisHERE
Great thread! I definitely see some of these tactics used here. If you don't start controversial threads you may not see them.

Here are some Vulnerabilities exploited by manipulators:

- the "disease to please"

- addiction to earning the approval and acceptance of others

- Emotophobia (fear of negative emotion)

- lack of assertiveness and ability to say no

- blurry sense of identity (with soft personal boundaries)

- low self-reliance

- external locus of control

Wait a minute, are you employing the tactics talked about by posting 6 times in a row about stuff pretty much unrelated?

I'd also like to point out that I think time as a member here should qualify as something.
It'd be pretty difficult for a disinfo agent to put in 6,7,8 hell even 10+ years into one forum and not be outed or atleast very suspicious of.

Regardless of your post count and other "ATS" stuff at the bottom of your avatar, what speaks most loudly to me is the time you have here. If you've been around for 5+ years then I think you deserve a modicum of respect and trust over posters who are brand new or have like six months on the board.

Got me kinda paranoid. I always wondered why some posts sounded almost automatic like a robot was typing.

Well we will see how good these dis-info agents are in the coming months.....
S+F

Well it looks like Phage and his minions finally got around to writing up their job description...

Must be review time.

2. Become incredulous and indignant. Avoid discussing key issues and instead focus on side issues which can be used show the topic as being critical of some otherwise sacrosanct group or theme. This is also known as the 'How dare you!' gambit.

I see this done with posts critical of Israel all the time, Israeli disinfo agents will come in and pull the holocaust card completely off topic. They also resort to this next one also:

5. Sidetrack opponents with name calling and ridicule. This is also known as the primary 'attack the messenger' ploy, though other methods qualify as variants of that approach. Associate opponents with unpopular titles such as 'kooks', 'right-wing', 'liberal', 'left-wing', 'terrorists', 'conspiracy buffs', 'radicals', 'militia', 'racists', 'religious fanatics', 'sexual deviates', and so forth. This makes others shrink from support out of fear of gaining the same label, and you avoid dealing with issues.

You just check the comments on CNN the next time there is an item critical of Israel posted there...

Originally posted by nosacrificenofreedom
That's not fair! Just because I have no Avatar i'm being regarded as some kind of shill or disinfo agent! That is plainly a bias argument! judge me for how i present my argument not how my account looks!

Who regarded YOU as ANYTHING??
Guilty conscience much??
Maybe we SHOULD take a closer look at you.

As far as what 'asktheanimals' said.
I would have to agree.
It always amazes me how fervently and rabidly some people try to debunk certain topics.
ESPECIALLY anything to do with September 11th.
HOLY CRAP they come out of the woodwork then.

It is one thing to argue your position but quite another to argue your position as though your LIFE depended on it!!

This is a really good link in helping to understand the psychology of what occurs on these and other sites. Many personally implement these tactics even unknowingly given there own personal biased opinions. We all have biased opinions yet there's that little voice that says, "well I would like to present my side of the issue or my thoughts on the issue because this particular topic or thread is really way off target". Yet its how we do it that makes the difference. If we attack, mislead, misdirect, or do anything that is not genuine I think it is pretty obvious to most and we usually just call read it and say... TROLL... yet its deeper than that for many different reasons. I really appreciate someone who says I see your viewpoint but this is wrong because x,y or z and here is the evidence for this. Or the person that says you make a good point and my mind is open to these possibility's because of x, y, or z.

There is a little voice that I think speaks to any intelligent person that realizes that every single post that we make can and might be used against us in some way shape or form in the future just by nature of the fact that these posts are permanent record. This makes one question, "Is it right and/or moral for websites like this to keep forever posts that are made"? How many of us have changed our opinions on things after we did more research on the topic? All of us I dare say unless we are really close minded and so arrogantly self absorbed that we would never consider being wrong about anything. Yet once you type it in here you are forever branded because you did. Slow to speech is really the best modus operandi. The world is not a good place and there are forces in this world that do not have anyones best interests but there own at heart.

I would like to see more regulars here on ATS learn these tactics and keep them handy when we see outrageous behaviors and upon replying to these types of trolls actually quote from this link which # they fall into. This will help all of us learn and understand what is really occurring.

Excellent Post!!!! Thanks!

Originally posted by MDDoxs
reply to post by zeeon

 

Interestingly enough, if you do your research and think critically like we have suggested, you may in the end find yourself agreeing with this so called dis-info agents regardless of their influence.

Everyone has the right to their own opinion. However, in the context of a forum such as ATS, the perspective "they" want you to have is either false or so far from the truth that it might as well be a lie...

I disagree - I think there's a fine line between keeping an open mind and critically thinking. Look at subjects from different perspectives to gain a better understanding of the situation as a whole.
Dis-info agents typically want you to stick to one perspective, one train of thought and to look at the subject as they presented it and the reader to form their same conclusions as well - exactly the opposite of looking at a subject critically (from different perspectives) and forming their own (read the readers own) conclusion.

reply to post by zeeon


In a perfect world, what you say makes much sense. But, we know there is a group here that operate right on the edge of civility, and offer nothing in the way of discourse, constantly banging the same debunker drum. And, they've been at it for YEARS. It's this group of posters that need to be 'shunned'. All of us who cry out for the justice denied us regarding 9/11, should join together and 'out' these traitors.

reply to post by MDDoxs


No, it's not always clear by any means but it is often a deciding factor for me when I do see it. You're quite right to say that it isn't always clear but time spent here does help in that regard.
What's amazing is how fast they'll turn out on certain threads and usually the first page will be filled with their comments. I find that pretty telling in itself.
It's a matter of seeing patterns with people, what they post about and how they say things. When all they ever do is hammer away at the same issues they do nothing but show their true colors.
Real people have far more interests than any one or 2 subjects and will admit to doubts and even ignorance on occasion - something the disinfo specialists never do.
Lack of an avatar is certainly not conclusive in itself, as would be any single of these things I mention in isolation, it's when you find several of these mannerisms together that should set off your alarm bells.

reply to post by Asktheanimals


I developed a great way to root out potential dis-info agents actually. It works astonishing well. I took the premise from how political exit polls are taken.

Basically, if you suspect a user of a being a troll or dis-info agent you look at their posting history. You need about 1100 posts to form a 95/98% accuracy rating if I'm not mistaken (but 800 will bring you around 80% accuracy). You copy and paste their posting history into a spreadsheet, then sort by topic. Then group these topics into categories that you can graph with say - a pie chart.

Most dis-info agents stick to particular topics. Especially political ones, 9/11 or hot button issues. They won't get into general discourse in a variety of subjects because that's not what they are paid to do - they are paid to sway opinion to their viewpoint - so they usually stick to one particular topic with a huge amount of posts.

Anyway, after you do this, you run a basic exit polling formula against the post count to get an idea of what they spend most of their time doing on the boards. It doesn't even matter how many total post counts they have - you only need about 1100 (I believe) to gain an accurate picture of what the poster is posting about.

When you graph it, if you see a pretty decent spread among a variety of categories, then chances are it's a normal user. However, if you see a HUGE amount of posts regarding a specific topic within a given category (the one that was most shocking that I've seen so far, without mentioning the user in question was the Politics category, specifically Anti-Ron Paul) then you have raised a suspicious flag.

Also, once you have this data, you can extrapolate how much time based on post count and topic someone is spending on the board. This is telling because typically most people don't sit on the board for 8+ hours a day posting on one topic (that in of itself would be suspicious to me...obviously moderators are exempt from this).

You aren't breaking any TOC (that I'm aware of) because posting history is open and available. Use it if your suspicious of a user and their motives. I've done it a few times to gauge someones true motives, and if it turns out I don't like the data I'm seeing then I just simple choose to not believe anything they say on the forums.

reply to post by zeeon


What about people who are only interested in a few topics? If you look at my posting history I bet you'll see the vast majority of my posts in the 2012 forum. This is because this is the topic I know best and have the most interest in. I'll read threads in other forums but for the most part I won't reply. This is either because the topic doesn't end up interesting me or I don't know enough on the topic to comment. I bet using your method I would look like a 2012 disinfo agent but in truth I'm just someone with too much time on my hands and have an interest in stopping the spread of baseless fear.

While most of the information in this article are probably true.. I highly doubt that this was leaked from an actual agency of any kind. The wording.. spelling.. It was most likely written by someone that is tired of seeing these tactics used over and over again. I'm not sure why they're trying to fool everyone by making it seem like it's legit though.

Then again I didn't read very thoroughly so I may be wrong.

Originally posted by YAHUWAH SAVES
This is a really good link in helping to understand the psychology of what occurs on these and other sites.

I must have missed the long line to the Paranoids and NutzFookedInTheHeads liquid dispenser.

Not fair. I brought Dixie Cups.



I did bring a bucketload of lives for anyone in this thread that might actually like to have one.

Originally posted by zeeon

 

Most dis-info agents stick to particular topics. Especially political ones, 9/11 or hot button issues. They won't get into general discourse in a variety of subjects because that's not what they are paid to do - they are paid to sway opinion to their viewpoint - so they usually stick to one particular topic with a huge amount of posts.

I wouldn't put it past them to realize this and have some direction to make mundane (or otherwise) posts in other subforums. Maybe I'm dreaming up a conspiracy with this line of thought, but I've thought about the same thing.

I think a lot of people here are genuinely interested in one or two topics though, especially in the beginning before they begin to "branch out". A good example of this might be the A&U forum, seems to be a lot of people here just interested in aliens and stuff. I know I spent a lot of time in A&U when I first became a member and before that, but lately I haven't posted on it as much as I used to.

When you graph it, if you see a pretty decent spread among a variety of categories, then chances are it's a normal user. However, if you see a HUGE amount of posts regarding a specific topic within a given category (the one that was most shocking that I've seen so far, without mentioning the user in question was the Politics category, specifically Anti-Ron Paul) then you have raised a suspicious flag.

I noticed that as well, so much that it kind of bothered me. Some members appeared to be here solely for the purpose of discrediting and bashing Ron Paul. While that's all fine and dandy if it's someone's opinion, I can't think of many more motives a person would have (other than $) to spend so much time on a subject they don't like, and hardly ever show up in a Romney or Obama thread that they allegedly support. Months and months of nothing but insulting banter barely skirting the T&C, I mean what else could it be?

I admit I am a fan of Ron Paul so maybe my opinion of things about him might be biased, and that viewing opposition as sort of "shills" is common among some Ron Paul supporters, but not so much I can't see the writing on the wall and perhaps there is some truth to it after all. I honestly have a hard time believing an army of trolls regurgitating MSM punchlines is truly everyone's opinion. Especially on ATS, a conspiracy website where any other year almost no one supports an establishment-esque president or any president at all.

-----

Interesting method you developed as well, I've been kind of doing the same thing but not to the extent you have.

Originally posted by AlonzoTyper
Well it looks like Phage and his minions finally got around to writing up their job description...

Must be review time.

He might come across as stubborn or skeptical, but I don't think hes a disinfo agent or anything like that. There are some good skeptics on ATS from what I can tell, ones on a quest for the truth and not so much just joining the skeptic bandwagon for whatever reason. Skepticism was meant to be a method of finding truth I think and not so much a fad like it has become on ATS.

Originally posted by Xcalibur254
reply to post by zeeon

 

What about people who are only interested in a few topics? If you look at my posting history I bet you'll see the vast majority of my posts in the 2012 forum. This is because this is the topic I know best and have the most interest in. I'll read threads in other forums but for the most part I won't reply. This is either because the topic doesn't end up interesting me or I don't know enough on the topic to comment. I bet using your method I would look like a 2012 disinfo agent but in truth I'm just someone with too much time on my hands and have an interest in stopping the spread of baseless fear.

Yeah it's not a perfect system. Obviously it's subjective - I would only even do that if I suspected you of being a disinfo agent in the first place. This would stem from the type of posts you write and the general (given the OP document's list) tone / disposition of the arguments you take.

What I described above serves more as a hard data to possibly support already identified suspicious activity.

reply to post by AlonzoTyper

I thought the same thing of Phage when I first joined, as he often debunks things with a single post. However, he backs up his points with relevant data and/or articles stating why he has come his conclusions. If he were aiming at disinfo, one would think that he would be a lot more vague with his replies.

reply to post by RSF77


I agree wholeheartedly. I think the thing that flagged Anti-Ron Paul sentiment and dis-info activity was towards the beginning of the Presidential run (if you remember, ATS Polls were popular, and Ron Paul won that Presidential poll overwhelmingly) there was tremendous support across the board for Ron Paul. It was really striking.

Then as the campaign continued, more and more new users continually would enter RP threads to change sentiment. Over and over again, and as time went on you could tell it worked. Gradually the number of RP avatars went down, RP pictures, tag lines, and signatures disappeared. Now you barely see any kind of RP stuff on the board. That led me to believe there was definitively some kind of disinformation going on to discredit Ron Paul (and that's not hard to believe - he is a threat to big bankers, corporatists and corrupt politicians across the board, so it would make sense to discredit him in every available medium as we have seen such as TV, news etc - including forums). I even saw it attempted at grassroots central websites dedicated to Ron Paul.

I ran that procedure I posted above about 10 times on various users - if memory serves I believe the data only showed that 3 had suspicious posting activity (one was the particular anti-ron paul user)

So in essence the system isn't perfect, but it can be useful if you already suspect someone.

This guy strikes me as an armchair theorist with no real concrete knowledge of disinformation. It's not like he found a CIA manual on covert operations; he made this stuff up based on his own biases. In this particular case he's a left-winger lamenting that the government is thwarting attempts at "eco-peace." He's mixed a little Saul Alinsky with his own imagination and come up with these points which, when not obvious, have no real backing and, frankly, usually won’t work. He’s set up one huge straw man argument here and he’s very impressed with his own work.

Of course, here on ATS it's a part of the culture to believe in such things. Not a week goes by without yet another thread on the subject, and people are accused of being disinfo agents on a daily basis. It's a form of ad hominem attack. It's also a tenant of the "true believer" in that you are either for us or against us, so if you have a different point of view, you MUST be a disinformation agent the same way that if you are not for Allah, you must be a heretic. You are either for Rome, or you are a barbarian, a Christian, or spawn of the devil. It goes with the territory of a Believer.

Now ATS likes to think of itself collectively as pretty cool. I mean, we "deny ignorance!" don't we? (Although it was recently pointed out that you could interpret the phrase a bit differently in that we "deny OUR OWN ignorance.” Hey, I didn't make that up. I’m just reporting it.) But look what we have here. Threads on such things as channeling aliens from Andromeda, Visits by shadow persons, various dreams that “must mean something,” a threat extolling the virtues of actress Shirley MacLaine, various NWO/Illuminati/Templar conspiracies, somebody saw a UFO over City X, how to time travel, false flag accusations claiming the Enterprise will be sunk to the London Olympics will be bombed/poisoned/disrupted, and a rehash of today's news from Fox and CNN.

Now if you really were a government disinformation agent, or, let's say, bureau with a staff of dozens, would you really want to change any of this? I mean, ATS really generates its own disinformation pretty readily. Channeled aliens from Andromeda? Really??? If you have such a bureau, it's pretty well a given that you don't have unlimited resources. Plus you are competing with the NSA that can't get enough Arabic and Farsi speakers to translate all the cell phone calls in Libya and Iran. There are a lot of existential threats in the world and it's tough to keep up when you’re trying to track every rebel splinter group in Africa.

So, domestically speaking, where would you put your resources? If I were deciding, I'd go for the extreme right wing and the extreme left wing. The right wing neo-Nazis are a scary bunch of dudes who like to blow things up and they don’t care much if a daycare facility gets blown up as collateral damage. They are heavily armed and would like to kill anyone who doesn't look like them. I think that is evil. I'd also target the extreme left wing because, talk about "take over the world," they'd just love to install a left wing dictatorship here, and they've nearly succeeded. They are also zealots, but they are more into Global Warming/Save the Whales than anything else. I think that is also evil. The key here is that both these "wing" extremes are composed of zealots and zealots are the most dangerous. A few of them can do a lot of damage.

I don't get the impression that ATS is full of zealotry. There certainly are a lot of misinformed people here willing to believe just about any crazy crackpot idea that comes along, like channeled aliens from Andromeda, but they'd much rather lament their divorce or crazy relationship problems than talk about forming a movement to change the world. Indeed, that's not allowed. It's against T&C. So although ATS likes to think of itself as very cool and full of enlightened people, it’s really a small fringe group that is not very dangerous and does not merit much attention.

And, yeah, it’s small. ATS likes to puff up its numbers. They have over a quarter million members, they say, yet only 55% have bothered to make a post and only about 5,000 members have made more than 500 posts. That’s 2% that you could actually say are really active here. 1% of members, 2500 people, have made over 1,000 posts. Really not much to worry about.

So my guess is ATS is certainly known, and it may be robo-scanned, and some keywords such as NSA may provoke a bored 20 year old E-4 working in a razor-wired and windowless NSA building at Fort Gordon in Augusta, Georgia to take a look and dismiss it out of hand, but there’s not much here that is of real concern to TPTB. ATS is certainly not dangerous. It’s the kind of place that is best left alone to wallow in its own wild imagination. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Originally posted by schuyler

 

This guy strikes me as an armchair theorist with no real concrete knowledge of disinformation. It's not like he found a CIA manual on covert operations; he made this stuff up based on his own biases.

Just like you just made that up based on your own bias. There is no way to know how that was conjured up, be it in a government building, some old apartment or in someones imagination. You would certainly agree that the techniques outlined in it are eerily similar to day to day operations on some of these forums? Right?

After all, just how much trouble would it be for someone with money to spend a tiny bit of it paying people in order to further an agenda on the internet? It's already done with the MSM and the internet is now becoming the next big news outlet, you think that is being completely ignored?

And, yeah, it’s small. ATS likes to puff up its numbers. They have over a quarter million members, they say, yet only 55% have bothered to make a post and only about 5,000 members have made more than 500 posts. That’s 2% that you could actually say are really active here. 1% of members, 2500 people, have made over 1,000 posts. Really not much to worry about.

Actually, this is one of the larger forums on the internet.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Seems like every time that is said there really is something to see.