How ATS has changed over 13+ years, page 3

posted on Apr, 20 2013 @ 11:09 PM

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reply to post by redtic

Oh pfft..GLP steals there info from ATS no doubt..Funny I seen a post on ATS, than a day later it shows up on GLP..I laughed at that site, and never returned.

jvm222

posted on Apr, 20 2013 @ 11:31 PM

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its a sign to stop thinking and sitting around and evolving and moving forward away from the cycle of suffering. let go and move forward

SouthernForkway26

posted on Apr, 20 2013 @ 11:41 PM

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I have been lurking on ATS since a little after 9/11. ATS has changed since the early days but the most important part of the site (to me) is still here. A member can put together a book-length opening thread on any crazy theory and somebody will take the time to agree/disagree with it. People take the time to check and read the sources cited and often do background checks on the sources. ATS is as good as you could expect for information of this nature from the internet.

The membership seems as diverse as ever. There also seems to be more emotion behind the posts than there used to be, but maybe thats just me. There is a ton of great information and intelligent members on this site, but you have to sift through more 'white noise' to find the good stuff.

Taupin Desciple

posted on Apr, 20 2013 @ 11:50 PM

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If you want to see how ATS has changed, look at a thread like this one started 10 years ago, then look at a new thread. There is no arguing or name calling in the old one, just a discussion. People stating their opinions and moving on. It used to be a lot more civil back in the day, now, everyone is vying for more stars and recognition.

One star per post will do me just fine.

IWant2Believe323

posted on Apr, 21 2013 @ 12:04 AM

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I wish we could let go and move forward, but this site keeps going backwards. I've been here for four years, mostly for the Fragile Earth Yellowstone forum (some of the brightest minds). I never post, unless I feel I can add something to the debate. But there's rarely any debate anymore, it's just trolling, thread derailing, and just nonsense.

Not to add a conspiracy element to this, but in ALL SERIOUSNESS, since Obama has been in office, ATS has been on a decline. If you think thats a coincidence, perhaps I could drink some of your Kool-Aid. His anti-conspiracy agenda has worked. He has made a propaganda mission to subdue our freedom of speech. He must pay ppl to destroy our forum. I haven't seen a good UFO thread or conspiracy since the Norway Spiral. With the exception of the Boston thread, which was an awesome collaboration, this site has just been on the downhill.

Don't get me wrong, I still love this site but the trolls need to be policed more heavily. Disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing does not in itself an argument make. And I think a lot of heavy weights just got sick & tired of it & left.

Letting them go was a mistake.

thehumbleone

posted on Apr, 21 2013 @ 12:19 AM

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Reply to post by Losonczy

It has changed quite a bit even since I signed on here in 2006. I had been lurking here since 2004 but didnt actually make an accout till '06. I was a pretty active poster for about two years but i felt like the site began changing too much once it's popularity began to explode. I still enjoy reading threads but I'm more of a lurker now. But yeah I wouldn't mind returning to those days when it felt more like a brotherhood as you put it.

Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

MrInquisitive

posted on Apr, 21 2013 @ 12:24 AM

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reply to post by Losonczy

OP,
First I will address your point about America bashing and then go on to more general topics regarding the issue you bring up regarding the changing landscape of ATS.

Perhaps there is more America bashing because America has been doing a lot of bad things in the last dozen years -- war crimes, torture, kidnapping, bombing and killing innocents including children and US soldiers urinating on corpses. Also the US government has been curtailing civil rights and building up the security state.

I'd also imagine that as internet usage has grown, more people outside of the US have joined ATS, and the rest of the world has a much different view of the US than a lot of Americans do.

I've only been on ATS for a couple of years, and only started looking at the politics and current events forums in the last year or so, but in just that time it seems that the amount of vitriol has increased as well as a large growth in unfounded conspiracy theories regarding the government. Mind you, some conspiracies are likely true, but people these days are claiming a conspiracy based on two different pictures of a person in a crowd, which are obviously taken at different times and possibly by different cameras, being slightly different.

And then there is just the overwhelming number of threads and posts in threads, due in no small part to a larger membership. The main Boston bombing thread must have 400+ pages by now. How can anyone follow such a thread? Seriously, some artificial intelligence is needed to filter out dumb and pointless comments and threads. To be clear, I'm not talking about censoring, but having a individual/personal interest profile that would filter to each person's preferences.

smirkley

posted on Apr, 21 2013 @ 12:58 AM

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Originally posted by onequestion
reply to post by Losonczy

Even in the past 4 years i have been here i have seen the average thread count go WAY up. When i first started looking at the website about 5 years ago i would watch the recently active section and you would have to wait a while for the post to scroll down the page. Now, as i read the recently active page i barely get halfway down the page before i have to refresh. Even 1 topic will be hard to keep up with these days.

Originally posted by Seiko
The older threads had an advantage, they had the concept of being new. Ideas were exchanged between people who were actually doing research and involving themselves in finding a truth. Now most threads are simply rehashes of these same ideas. If you want to opine on a certain subject you can spend days digging through old threads trying to find where to comment,

...

Now the feel of the site, it's become in my opinion more like a social media site. I can only agree with the poster above who pointed this out. Stars, flags, likes and +'s will usually lead to this. When opinions are tailored to the popular consensus you're not going to develop ground breaking ideas. It is this lack of ground breaking ideas, or the conceived lack as I will say that they are still here but buried among the inane, that people are probably decrying. Ideas are buried in a sea of multiple threads and personal insults. Couple this with threads where the first 10 replies amount to " omg I so totally agree, star and flag, thumbs up". As the site has grown it's become more and more difficult to filter what we seek. Each of us has our areas of interest, and as the site gets more popular we will feel that our areas are being shunted. This is perception.

Ya know,... (Skeptic,.. read my post !!),.... the above outlines some serious consideration for the betterment of ATS!

(and Skadi,... long time no see,... good to see ya)

recorrit

posted on Apr, 21 2013 @ 01:04 AM

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I've only been registered for a year, I do a lot more reading than posting, but I've noticed a change. It's more more political based, and everything is NWO, false flag yadda yadda. Its very off putting, There's no real substance to a lot of the posts I read, and at times even less research done of the subject.

pigwithoutawig

posted on Apr, 21 2013 @ 01:21 AM

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When I started on Ats, it seemed like people had interesting ideas and intelligent posts. Posters were friendlier and everything was able to be discussed in a sane orderly manner. Now it seems everything is a conspiracy, no matter how unlikely. Posters make a thread but don't defend their position. If they don't agree with you they get angry or ignore your opposite view. Also it seems, no matter what you post, it always comes around to being President Obama's fault. I used to post quite a bit but now I just tend to browse and can't really believe the amount of ridiculous theories people put out there now. It's still a good place to get news and some info but man it seems like there is an awful lot of, let's say less sane members now.

cheeser

posted on Apr, 21 2013 @ 03:31 AM

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ATS is the same as it always has been. Good contend is hard to find.

Lysergic

posted on Apr, 21 2013 @ 03:36 AM

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Whats changed all that much?

Buncha weirdos on the internet. just the pond has gotten deeper.

it's just a lot of you/us get burnt out, s'all.

edit on 21-4-2013 by Lysergic because: (no reason given)

subarujump

posted on Apr, 21 2013 @ 03:54 AM

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I've been here a very long time. However, nearly all of that time was spent lurking and just reading.

I will agree that the overall quality of the forum has declined, but it isn't just ATS. I think every forum I've ever been a member of has suffered a decline in quality over the past 10-15 years. Heck, if the old local BBSes I used to frequent were still up, they'd probably be the same way.

Just a guess but since a lot of the decline seems recent, I think it may be related to the rise of social networks. People have gotten used to regurgitating the same things everyone else is saying, and people are too mentally restricted or perhaps even afraid to think for themselves. Seems ironic that a conspiracy site would be affected, but that is what appears to have happened. Regardless, the end result is forum quality suffers as threads easily devolve into a sea of trolling and chaos.

ArMaP

posted on Apr, 21 2013 @ 05:38 AM

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The following is my opinion as a member participating in this discussion.

Originally posted by Losonczy
I've been on ATS for about 13 years.

This is how ATS looked like 13 years ago.

It was before "my time", as I only found ATS on 2003.

In the early days, ATS posters and lurkers were interested in the most popular conspiracies. Folks enjoyed the early promise of the Internet...a deep resource for researching, providing links and doing more research, connecting dots and pointing out holes in initial/original stories. Most people studied hypotheses, contributed ideas, and enjoyed the devil's advocate back and forth. People questioned the MSM and committed themselves to serious detective work.

You point to the reason for any difference between the "now" and the "then", people.

The way the average person acts today is not exactly the same way that same person acted 13 or 10 years ago.

Do you remember how was your everyday life back in 2000?

Thirteen years later, the site feels much more divisive and divided into countries or cultural positions. There is a lot more America bashing it seems.

America bashing is wrong but calling the French "surrender monkeys" is OK, I guess.

One of the few threads I have ever made (back in 2004) was exactly about that, the apparent need of some people from the US to feel hated, so I guess it's nothing new.

I think the biggest problem is that most people, today, act more selfish, even in the small everyday things, and they do not notice it.

Why people post on Facebook and other useless sites about what they are doing? Who cares?

Did you find a funny photo? Good for you, but don't act as if you were the one that had the idea, you just copied other people's idea and showed it to someone that could already know it, like when you start to tell a joke and the other persons says "I know that one, it ends with...".

I think that the Facebook/Twitter/social network mentality gave people a wrong kind of idea of what communication is; it's not supposed to be one way only, it's supposed to be interactive, like when two people are talking to each other and one interrupts the other to say something.

That doesn't happen on the Internet (and, for some people, doesn't happen on a telephone call either, as they don't stop talking when the other person tries to interrupt), so something that, in real life, is considered as, at least, a little rude, is the "normal" thing on the Internet.

People that started using the Internet only in the last few years find this mentality already in place, so they adapt to it quickly, but those that know the Internet for a longer time see the difference.

And, when we are talking about group communication, size matters.

What's the worse feeling, being in a room with four people, having a conversation, or in a stadium, with thousands of people, divided in small groups, each having their own conversation?

As an ATS Staff Member, I will not moderate in threads such as this where I have participated as a member.

Amandla

posted on Apr, 21 2013 @ 05:42 AM

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I agree with you, OP.
What I have noticed over a times is that when I happen to read older threads (early 2000s), than there´s much more sincere interest in different theories, even if these theories are very out there and bizarre. Yes, more real detective work and hardly any riddiculing or automatic one-liners (like tens of posts- "enough of this doom-porn already!" in every single thread where OP often haven´t deserved it, because he/she wants to discuss different aspects of prophecies, not declearing doom).

It also seems that we have much more political fights and sceptics who deny every possibilty that there might be some consipracy in different events. But ATS IS a conspiracy site. Of course there are many theories that probably are´t true and I don´t see conspiracy in everything either

But ATS should be the place for in-depth detective work. Not just arguing about different opinions.
Both, sceptics and believers (of whatever theory) should provide research, not just opinions or name-calling.

ATS has fantastic members who can do great "detective work", some threads have shown it. But I wish this was ATS´s main focus.

edit on 21-4-2013 by Amandla because: (no reason given)

ArMaP

posted on Apr, 21 2013 @ 05:52 AM

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The following is my opinion as a member participating in this discussion.

Something I forgot to say:

If we see people complaining about other people being banned because they are from the left or the right political side of things, because they are pro or against same sex marriage, because they pro or against whatever, that only means that there isn't any real bias behind the reasons for the bans.

As an ATS Staff Member, I will not moderate in threads such as this where I have participated as a member.

yorkshirelad

posted on Apr, 21 2013 @ 06:22 AM

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Been here 13 years myself (different name though due to email change). It has changed a lot. There is a tendency of people to start name calling "shill", "troll", "sheepie" as soon as someone comes along and disagrees with the OP. In fact worse than that when somebody simply asks : do you have some evidence for your assertion? That is how this site used to work. Somebody throws in a theory with at least some evidence. Then that evidence is added to (on both sides) and then you can come to a conclusion. Sometimes the evidence is still fleeting or contradictory. But these days there are so many threads that are just sounding boards for peoples opinions. This is not a debating society.

One thing that has changed that affects all these conspiracies and "unexplained mysteries" is the wealth of information at our fingertips with the internet. We can cross reference data to find out the truth. We can see data trails where the same article is copied and re-copied and copied again. Each time being quoted as "fact". This kind of thing has been a real eye opener for me. When I was a teenager I could not get enough of mysteries and conspiracies. I still have tons of books !!!!! Guess what the vast majority is no longer a mystery nor a conspiracy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Unfortunately that is far too "normal" for some people who , to be perfectly frank, seem to get a almost sexual thrill from an "end of world disaster" or "secret government cover-up".

There are still some decent unknowns (conspiracies if you prefer) but we are swimming in religious and end of world dross.

Snappahead

posted on Apr, 21 2013 @ 06:30 AM

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reply to post by Losonczy

It's just a result of the site becoming more popular - unavoidable. That and more people with mental illnesses gaining internet access...

swan001

posted on Apr, 21 2013 @ 06:31 AM

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Originally posted by seagull
reply to post by Losonczy

In the good ol' days, and I was here for most of those, the site was much, much smaller than it is now. The ratio of staff to members was much smaller than it is now. We all knew each other, and behaved accordingly...

...with the increase in size, comes an increase in the behaviors you dislike so. Be the change you want. Set the example. Instead of complaining about it, try to set a good example.

Yeah but Seagull, what about those disinformation agents (or whatever they are) who keep infiltrating the system and give even well-documented threads a bad credit? I'm thinking about threads like one of mine here, www.abovetopsecret.com..., which I spent days to build but was trolled until the second page, or www.abovetopsecret.com..., where the OP actually spread disinformation about the Elite family and encouraged ATSers to discard all "these conspiracy theories" and embrace the Elite and its eugenics program? If you make a good thread, they troll you, and if if you do nothing, they make a disinformation thread themselves.

edit on 21-4-2013 by swan001 because: (no reason given)

Rocker2013

posted on Apr, 21 2013 @ 06:36 AM

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reply to post by Losonczy

I haven't been a member for very long, but I know of a couple of people who were, and I lurked too.

The biggest problem I can see is that ATS is now so far detached from a real investigative, analytical and scientific community that it pushes intelligent people away, and welcomes the extreme opinions. I don't know why that is, but perhaps it has something to do with the traffic they get from hot topic subjects? I would guess that more people would be signing up to read about Boston and opinions than they would be to read about Watergate.

It just so happens that so many of those discussions about Boston are based in speculation, rumour, fantasy and lies. I have seen very little, if any, actual evidence offered for any alternative story about what happened. People have ideas about it being a false flag, that the US Gov was responsible, that Saudi's were responsible, that Israel was responsible, that North Korea was responsible, that Russia was responsible... but there is never any actual evidence, it's just an opinion, or a theory.

As a reasonably intelligent person, this is very disappointing to me. I thought ATS would be better than that.

edit on 21-4-2013 by Rocker2013 because: (no reason given)