Ah yes, I remember reading this back in 2012. It's a good document, but you can't take it too literally or go around accusing everyone of being a shill. Interes

Ah yes, I remember reading this back in 2012. It's a good document, but you can't take it too literally or go around accusing everyone of being a shill. Interestingly, I'd say HN is probably one of the least-threatened online communities for this kind of disruption, as administration is stringent and relatively consistent and transparent about the rules. A small, tightly-knit userbase also makes me doubt that HN is heavily targeted by these types of programs, however there are still a few issues (Israel, Russia, the NSA) that predictably draw out people who may not be legitimate. This gets noticed quite frequently by posters here, though. A site like reddit I would classify as high risk. I would say with certainty that reddit is heavily targeted by various propaganda/control programs, potentially with some degree of complicity from the administration. reddit has a large, free user base that isn't likely to have expert level information on certain topics-- new accounts can be made easily, developed, then used for propaganda for free. It's easy to manipulate voting system, and reddit is known for its openly corrupt moderators. I happened to browse reddit in the past, during the Russian invasion of Crimea-- the shills were palpable in every related thread. The same could be said for the volumes of accounts with little history that (on reddit, the largest Snowden-friendly place that exists) were openly calling for Snowden to be executed and other stuff like that. Then there's the perpetual corporate advertisements that are disguised as posts or submissions. The unfortunate reality is that reddit is fully locked down and propagandized, and has been for a few years now. The size of reddit makes attempts to control it inevitable. My point here is that the techniques discussed in the article are real, and actively practiced on audiences similar to our own here. The remedy is knowledge of propaganda, harsh moderation, and critical thinking. I think a new killer app would be a form of automated shill-detection for forums... the trouble would be reducing the false positives to zero. The reality of our era (and, in fact, any modern era) is that people can be convinced of insane or unreasonable things by powerful outside forces very easily.