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The Gentleperson's Guide To Forum Spies (2012)
- _bfhp 4y agoAs in many other areas, the younger generation raised on Web 2.0 are far beyond the Web 1.0 crowd in regards to industriousness and psyche. Nobody writes or reads stuff like this anymore. They just install Shinigami Eyes and move on with their day
- jabthedang 4y ago
- dang 4y agofor the fourth time even: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33295315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33295315
- googlryas 4y ago(2018), but mostly timeless.
- raydiatian 4y ago> mostly timeless Which is kind of crazy in a small way, right? These techniques could have applied even back in the late 90’s early 00’s. They’re effectively just mechanisms for warping a forum, which is to perhaps claim that forums are a withered technology, perhaps without enough lateral thinking.
- readthenotes1 4y agoI bet we'd have seen a bunch of this in Athens back in the day...
- sroussey 4y agoHaving run a forum hosting service back then, I can tell you that these things were applied. The more interesting post (considering it talks about both sides) would include the counter-measures that moderators and platform providers do. Although, truth be told, obscurity of these things was (and is) very effective on most.
- sroussey 4y agoI’ll talk about one: assume that there are a number of agitators, but they are still a small minority inside a forum. What we would do if things were getting out of hand, is make the forum require a login. At this point, we know who is looking at the forum, and therefore we could present different views of content to different people for the same forum. (Rarely we would do this with a supercookie). We went ahead and grouped all the agitators together, so that they would be able to communicate with each other, and not think that their posts were deleted. However, the main forum members would never see these messages or replies by these people, and the order of the messages would reflect that. Much better than sliding. But if they gained access under a different name, they would realize. This obscurity of the practice was important. Nothing quiets an agitator more than silence from that they are trying to agitate.
- walterbell 4y ago> they would be able to communicate with each other, and not think that their posts were deleted. However, the main forum members would never see these messages or replies by these people Golden Rule of Trollception.
- anigbrowl 4y agoSchopenhauer wrote a bitter sarcastic book on logical fallacies nearly 2 centuries ago which was (probably) meant as a critique of his intellectual rivals but has enjoyed a revival as an early guide to trolling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Being_Right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Being_Right
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- squarefoot 4y agoActually 2012, since it's a copy of this article at Cryptome. https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm
- mceachen 4y ago@dang can you change this post to link directly to the cryptome or pastebin source, rather than the verbatim copy?
- dang 4y agoOk, changed from https://edith.reisen/computers/security/forum_shills.html https://edith.reisen/computers/security/forum_shills.html.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- googlryas 4y agoOops, thank you. I misread the "last edited" date on the bottom as the created date. That makes way more sense - my intuition was that I had read this article a long time ago, and a mere 4 years ago didn't seem right, but, I don't want to blame it all on the COVID era, but I've lost my sense of time these past 7 years.
- m463 4y agoI've wondered about stuff like this when a post appears here that is critical of some well-known company.
- ggm 4y agoYes, but I hazard a guess it's 30/30/30 fanbois/trolls/real. I would love to be paid to be nasty about Musk, alas I have to decide to do it for love not money. What category does that put me in?
- poopnugget 4y ago
- wincy 4y agoIf only I could get paid to gush about how great Musk is, you and I would have great job security!
- ggm 4y agoI think both our paymasters would be people we didn't want to be associated with alas.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoI'm pretty sure he or his PR firm actually does this, particularly on Reddit (where it seems to be cheap to manufacture consensus). A lot of other big business interests too. As far as people paid to bash him, I doubt anyone has the same incentives.
- bentcorner 4y agoPersonally that Brave Browser article a few days ago looked quite strange (to me, at least). A lot of top-level comments positive about the browser within a relatively short period of time after posting. Not a lot of commentary about the company itself and related controversies. That only happened after the post hit the front page.
- transcriptase 4y agoFor a real-time example, go to r/politics and sort by new. See what news never sees the light of day but somehow still gets 50+ comments saying “who cares” or “what about…”.
- spacemadness 4y agoOr go here anytime a post shows up about crime in San Francisco. In r/bayarea there was a poster that posted nothing but crime posts multiple times a day. If anyone pointed it out they’d be heavily downvoted within minutes. There are groups dedicated to this in many city subreddits.
- galangalalgol 4y agoWhich sides were the shills in that story? Was it the alt-right "thah! This is what ya get without the thin blue line" or the fixie riding tankies saying "everything is perfect, I've never even heard of crime here before, and the whole place smells like fresh clean ocean breeze!"
- spacemadness 4y agoThe “everything is perfect” crowd isn’t organizing this way.
- hker999 4y agoThey dont need to organize. The government hides the crime statistics and the politicians make many crimes legal.
- spacemadness 4y agoIf they don’t need to organize why are they?
- woodruffw 4y agoAt least in the NYC subreddit, we have a consistent group of a few dozen people who blame Alvin Bragg for every single thing that happens in the city. Never mind the fact that he’s only the Manhattan DA; you’ll see the same handles blame him for random crimes that happen in other boroughs.
- MarcoZavala 4y ago
- zackees 4y ago
- chimineycricket 4y agoYou can see this at work all day on /pol/ as well.
- stanislavb 4y ago"/pol/"?
- bergenty 4y agoWho cares.
- chimineycricket 4y agonsfw: 4chan.org/pol/
- bussierem 4y agoThat format refers to 4chan boards. That one is “pol(itics)”
- anigbrowl 4y agoI see what you did there
- honkler 4y agomany glowies there
- FpUser 4y agoI am visiting forums for entertainment. Well I also get some really useful tech links on HN every once in a while. If the author of this insanely long list thinks that I have nothing to do with my life but study their creation and then use the "wisdom" gained to hunt for psyops they have to get a life. Well if it is their job I understand ;) Yes there are all type of "agents" on forums. If they think that their posts are going to change my opinions I have a bridge to sell.
- chlorion 4y agoFound the psyop agent! (just kidding, maybe?) I think everyone likes to think they are immune to this type of manipulation and only those "other" people fall for it, but it's a lot more subtle than that. Thinking that you are immune to it is probably a sign that you are much more vulnerable than you realize.
- FpUser 4y agoI do not eat babies for breakfast, I never want to force my point of view if people disagree, I do not search Putin under my bed in the morning. If all of this the result of me being affected by forum propagandists then kudos to them. As I said I do not give a flying fuck and prefer doing something productive rather than study some mental regurgitation that supposedly meant to "protect" me from "improper" thoughts.
- LaGrange 4y agoThis is fantastic, because it describes fairly typical forum activity as a sign of _soviet KGB super spy activity_. Now, those happen, but aren’t _that_ frequent. Meanwhile when you see those “who cares” posts, you’re just dealing with genuine bona fide terrible people. So now this post triggered folks here to look at every time their post - or something they _personally_ believe important - sinks and think “oh, it’s the COINTELPRO” - meanwhile it’s just that nobody cares. Maybe they should, I don’t know, but they don’t. On top of that, I bet it made a few of you think that police violence videos are Russian psyops. Just smuggled that under the radar, phrased it in a technically correct way. Essentially I’m saying it’s like those “protect women against trafficking” videos aimed at wealthy middle-class white women - that both make them paranoid, and distract from real issues, all so that the poster can feel smart.
- krapp 4y agoI mean, it's literally called "The Gentleman's Guide To Forum Spies" and claims one of the obvious signs of being a fed is denying the credibility of conspiracy theories. It's an obvious /x/ shitpost that for some reason a lot of people take seriously. It may have some value in describing the psychology of forums, trolling techniques and logical fallacies but it's purpose is obviously to troll paranoids into seeing spooks everywhere.
- skybrian 4y agoThere is a claim that getting caught is bad for the attacker, but it seems like creating a few fake accounts that get caught probably would help increase the level of distrust quite a bit.
- kome 4y agoTwenty-Five Rules of Disinformation = you can see this at work with NAFO
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- superkuh 4y agoI'm not saying this doesn't happen. It obviously does. But I still think you have to take everyone at face value if you want to have a healthy community. The only thing less healthy than a forum full of psyops and shills is a forum full of genuine people accusing each other of being shills.
- bergenty 4y agoShills are genuine people too which is where your argument and overall decorum in a forum breaks down.
- aamoscodes 4y agoThe sweet spot is finding a community where everyone is jokingly accusing everyone else of psyop-activity. Make it meaningless
- cirgue 4y agoThis is kind of a false dichotomy. Taking everyone at face value is one of the dumbest thing you can do on the internet. Assuming there are exactly 0 paid posters in your forum, there are still plenty of people who are enthusiastic trolls and bad faith actors because that’s just how they have fun. Letting those people go unchallenged is a recipe for a community that’s dominated by malignant narcissist.
- superkuh 4y agoI agree it's false. But because the two perceptions are not mutually exclusive. Use delayed tit for tat. First take at face value, then learn from repeated encounters. That's the best part about forums versus social media sites: many repeated interactions with the same people. From that you can evolve trust without being a cynic.
- mandmandam 4y agoThough still relevant, this is old stuff. Nowadays many of the largest forums are simply captured, by a dedicated team working to a script with dozens of alts. Once you have complicit moderators, this stuff is lame in comparison. Once your guy / team has mod control, you can change the entire culture and tone of the forum, as soft or as hard as you like, and ban complainers. You can make posts invisible to search engines, or remove posts for a couple hours and then put them back once the algorithm is bored of them. You can wipe posts entirely, give no explanation, and wipe the posts that complain. If you think people wouldn't bother to do this, think again. There's significant amounts of money and political capital involved. What PR company or major political party wouldn't want control of a national subreddit that keeps making corruption and cover-ups hard to control?
- ChadB 4y agoI never realized just how bad this can be until I started selling/marketing my startup. I was so confused by the reaction to my participation on a few subreddits where my target customers hang out - I had never experienced anything like it before. I started to see patterns (not only against my posts personally, although I quickly stopped trying to participate) because I began to understand the market players. It's unreal how inauthentic most of the content actually is and how much of it is straight up shill marketing. I suspect this is true for a large number of niche forums where specific products or services become "blessed" by the community. The only way to accomplish this is with either a large network of puppet accounts or with the support of the moderators. Probably both.
- thimkerbell 4y agoHow would an outside reader be able to detect that this sort of manipulation was occurring?
- mandmandam 4y agoWith a lot of effort, tbh. And that's just to see it happening - making anyone care is orders of magnitude harder again. People have enough to be worrying about these days without online forum drama. To answer your question a bit though: * The 'dead giveaway' is basically always going to be some kind of mod drama. Sometimes this is fake drama, sometimes it's to harass existing mods out, sometimes it goes as far as print media and tv stories accusing a forum of bad behavior. Look at who is instigating it, how often they support each other, how much they're posting and commenting, how quickly they comment on relevant threads etc. * Keep an eye out for sudden and extreme rule changes, such as moving political talk to a seperate (much smaller) subreddit moderated by known antagonists; or removing discussion of topics such as racism, BLM, etc. This can be a sign that the new mods are 'bought' in some way. * Browse by new to get a glimpse at stories before they're removed. This is most useful when there's a story getting actively buried, or a narrative being pushed. * There are tools that can help you keep track of users such as RES, or to analyze user's history. * You can use these tools to find people who are fighting back and keep track of their insights, or keep an eye on accounts known for bs-ing. It's a lot of effort for very little reward though lol. * It can be illuminating to post verboten stories yourself, then keep track of any strangeness. E.g., the story getting removed, funniness with the vote count, particular commenters rushing in to spread fud, etc. You can try it here on HN, to get a glimpse of how actively some groups keep track of hot topics: Find a fresh story that goes against an industry (or empire) known for their online PR goons, and see what happens when you post it. Even comments mentioning certain keywords will attract attention. If you think that sounds conspiratorial - just try it.
- crummy 4y agoAssuming that Elon Musk is paying off shills, or proponents of nuclear energy are, or whomever else you suspect, how hard would it be to get a job doing this, get paid for it, then go public with receipts and proof that it's happening?
- code_duck 4y agoI would think anyone doing something like that would make contractors sign an NDA.
- ceejayoz 4y agoI really doubt that happens all that much. Far easier to find existing super fans and just make sure your preferred arguments make it to them. They’ll do the rest, for free.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y agoThere's an entire industry doing reputation washing for rich people and corporations.
- ceejayoz 4y agoSure. They’re just largely doing other things; puff pieces, SEO, takedown / right to be forgotten requests, etc. Not trolling forums.
- Minor49er 4y agoYou sign an NDA when you take the job. Going public often opens up the possibility for lawsuits. Plus, a lot of these things are already publicly known, but most people don't think that it affects them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3IyqirKzNA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3IyqirKzNA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t52LB2fYhoY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t52LB2fYhoY https://shareblueastroturf.netlify.app/ https://shareblueastroturf.netlify.app/
- tsol 4y agoWhat kind of receipts are there that people would believe? "This guy said he works for elon musk and he paid me $2000 to go on reddit and call people pedophiles, just look at this zelle email!" wouldn't go very far.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ratel 4y agoNothing in this article is specifically related to forum posts. This stuff can be found within any gathering of people and most have been described way earlier than the internet, as far back as the original Forum or Agora. That is not what is wrong with it. If you read the article and think there is something to it, please read it again and compare all the 'evidence' to the behavior of what you suspect a normal forum user would do: Ask questions? Gather information? Establish rapport? Propose something stupid or dangerous? Comment on the wrong thing? Post something that leads people away from the post you are interested in and have so much people comment on it that your important information disappears. You can get that just by the number of people telling the original poster it is 'off-topic'. Yes you would expect normal users to do all of them some of the time. If you value your (online) community judge all actions by Hanlon's razor: "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". If malice was that easily distinguishable from normal behavior there would be a lot less of it. Don't let anyone tell you you should approach your community with suspicion, because then they are already halfway there in destroying it.
- generalizations 4y agoWhat is your specific suggestion? It sounds like you're saying that we should assume it's all just stupidity, and there is no intentionality to any kind of apparent psyops/agitators/shills, and we should just pretend like it's all good. That's naive. We simply end up with forums where, if such bad actors do exist, they have a much easier time controlling the narratives. Better to harbor a modicum of suspicion, for the sake of protecting the genuineness of the community.
- Eisenstein 4y agoHanlon's razor should be modified to to include 'without adequate evidence' at the beginning. You can gain this evidence from repeated interactions or from the community as a whole. This is going to be subjective so there is not going to be a list of pass/fail tests you can apply.
- ratel 4y agoWell my suggestion would be to be confident and positive. Confident that your issue/ cause/subject is important and that there are enough other people sharing that believe in the forum, regardless of the nay-sayers. With positive I mean post things that are on topic for you, comment on things you find contributing to the issue/cause/subject and refrain from the rest. You really don't have to tell people that something is inappropriate, that they are wrong, dangerous. They will learn by not getting a response. Don't try to control a narrative, try to share a narrative with as much people who are willing to join the forum.
- labrador 4y agoHN makes it easy to stifle dissent with "flag" and graying out a comment until it is "dead". That's why I always browse with "showdead" set to "yes." Most of the dead comments deserve it, but some of them are quite interesting but don't match the values of the HN community. I've been "killed" a couple times when I didn't think I deserved it. I'm a contrarian by nature, but I value HN too much to feel bad about it. There are other places to discuss sensitive topics.
- soheil 4y agoI think a topic can be extremely sensitive and still be discussed on HN as long as it fits a certain accepted narrative. The worry is this asymmetry.
- labrador 4y ago> I think a topic can be extremely sensitive and still be discussed on HN I don't agree. All it takes is 4 people to downvote and flag you and you're dead
- bombcar 4y ago
- walterbell 4y agoNarrative acceptability changes over time, partly due to narratives being debated here and elsewhere. HN debate on sensitive topics is possible, but like any contested space, it requires more care and effort.
- soheil 4y ago> Narrative acceptability changes over time, partly due to narratives being debated here Circular logic. What cannot be debated in the first place can never change to become an acceptable narrative at least not here.
- duxup 4y agoI’m skeptical how good anyone is at identifying any of this. The amount of “you’re one of them” or “you’re just a troll” out there on the internet when someone simply doesn’t agree or even understand is seemingly infinite. It’s a nearly weekly accusation thrown at me on Reddit. People’s willingness to believe someone else is a troll or similar seems to just mean they never have to consider any ideas they don’t like.
- EarlKing 4y agoIt's always easier to believe your opposition is ontologically evil -- that way you never have to address your own epistemological emptiness. Of course, the fact that it's blatantly obvious that far too many "people" on the net are behaving indistinguishably from chatbots doesn't help matters.
- adolph 4y ago> ontologically evil Like they come up with really terrible classification categories? > epistemological emptiness Does this mean one does not have a theory of knowledge or that one thinks that knowledge does not exist? https://www.reddit.com/r/PhilosophyMemes/comments/u1675o/hey_philosophymemes_please_explain_what/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PhilosophyMemes/comments/u1675o/hey... https://www.quora.com/Are-emptiness-and-nothing-better-as-ontological-or-epistemological-constructs https://www.quora.com/Are-emptiness-and-nothing-better-as-on...
- EarlKing 4y ago> Like they come up with really terrible classification categories? Rather they just declare their opposition evil by nature so they don't have to analyze their behavior any further, and anything done to them is, in their eyes, morally justified. It is, in other words, dehumanizing. > Does this mean one does not have a theory of knowledge or that one thinks that knowledge does not exist? It means that they have no formal theory of knowledge and simply accept whatever is conventionally wise to them (or, more specifically, whatever fits their unacknowledged class interest).
- 4y ago
- tptacek 4y agoEveryone wants to believe they're sizing up some psyops scheme. The dopamine chemistry is just too good: you've got an enemy, the feeling of being in a dramatic narrative where nothing's what it seems, the superiority of knowing that you've spotted something everyone missed, and a way of bucketing the stories you dislike as illegitimate. The threads are even worse, because if you've got an all-purpose argument for shutting down rebuttals, why not use it?
- byecomputer 4y agoNice try, Topic Dilutor
- victor22 4y agoLOL! Reddit is full of psyop posters like these. Especially when some celebrity says some real shit about govmnt, you'll see reddit next day overloaded with personal attacks of all kinds on such person.
- orangepurple 4y agoOn *chans those topics receive a deluge of creepy "go to sleep" posts
- groby_b 4y ago> Especially when some celebrity says some real shit about govmnt, LOL indeed. Celebrities rarely say "real shit" about the government. They are good at the thing that made them famous. They are... tertiary sources, at best, when it comes to talking about things relating to government. Celebrity didn't give them insight, just a larger megaphon to shout through. Doesn't matter what their political beliefs are. I'm probably psyops too.
- PragmaticPulp 4y agoIronically, a lot of the organic content posted on Reddit is probably better at generating social unrest, demoralizing citizens, and altering perceptions of the United States than any foreign adversary could manufacture. I think many of these same motivations are at play: > The dopamine chemistry is just too good: you've got an enemy, the feeling of being in a dramatic narrative where nothing's what it seems, the superiority of knowing that you've spotted something everyone missed People on social media sites just love to think that they've got everything figured out in a way that isn't obvious to the people around them in the real world. These sites create a feedback loop wherein people are encouraged to post more content that feeds the hive minds' ideas while downvoting/rejecting anything that doesn't match.
- walterbell 4y agohttps://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/05/20/ai-bots-grassroots-astroturf/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/05/20/ai-bots-gr... & https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/oag-fakecommentsreport.pdf https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/oag-fakecommentsreport... > New York state attorney general issued a report on ... big telecommunications companies paid millions of dollars to specialist “AstroTurf” companies to generate public comments. These companies then stole people’s names and email addresses from old files and from hacked data dumps and attached them to 8.5 million public comments and half a million letters to members of Congress. All of them said that they supported the corporations’ position on something called “net neutrality,” the idea that telecommunications companies must treat all Internet content equally and not prioritize any company or service. Three AstroTurf companies — Fluent, Opt-Intelligence and React2Media — agreed to pay nearly $4 million in fines. U.S. 2012 Smith-Mundt legalization of propaganda lead to an industrial-scale "grassroots PR" industry for use by any buyer in the "nudge" market, including a sizable subset of the global Fortune 500. This industry has since been active in online venues with meaningful audiences, http://www.techsoc.com/grassroots.html http://www.techsoc.com/grassroots.html & https://twitter.com/evoleadership/status/761959456624082944 https://twitter.com/evoleadership/status/761959456624082944 & https://qualpolicomm.wordpress.com/2014/10/06/q-a-with-ed-walker-on-grassroots-for-hire/ https://qualpolicomm.wordpress.com/2014/10/06/q-a-with-ed-wa... > Walker shows how repertoires of participation originally developed by advocacy organizations, electoral campaigns, and social movements are commercialized by public affairs consultants who offer them as professional services ... The result is an increasingly “subsidized public” where selective incentivization and rational prospecting by public affairs consultants looking to mobilize support for their clients’ interests work to get people involved in particular political processes. 2014 book http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IO0E69E/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IO0E69E/ > ..illuminates how elite consultants have adopted grassroots advocacy tactics for paying clients. Rather than being dismissed as mere 'astroturf', these consultants' campaigns should be seen as having real effects on political participation and policymaking Organized (e.g. software-assisted) online pseudo-persona lobbyists of public opinion are usually outnumbered by individual humans, who can gain the experience to move such arms races towards higher quality debate.
- hnews_account_1 4y ago
- eucryphia 4y ago
- Genghis_9000 4y agoAmazing that HN of all places are taking this childish LARP seriously. > Guys they are trying to disrupt my obscure forum about some niche technical subject! > Who? > Them!
- batmanturkey 4y ago
- photochemsyn 4y agoEverything cited in this article can be grouped under the umbrella of 'manipulation of public opinion'. The tactics used have been analyzed and grouped similarly before, for example there was the late 1930s Institute of Propaganda Analysis which produced some publications grouping propaganda tactics into these categories: Name-calling, Glittering generalities, Transfer, Testimonial, Plain folks, Card stacking, Bandwagon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Propaganda_Analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Propaganda_Analy... The other notions - i.e. malicious sabotage or disruption of groups by inserting agent provocateurs - have a similar long history and have also been analyzed, it's basically just spying of various sorts (see Sun Tzu, Art of War, Chapter 13) https://suntzuart.com/sun-tzu-art-of-war/chapter-13 https://suntzuart.com/sun-tzu-art-of-war/chapter-13 As others note, assuming someone you disagree with on an internet forum is a malicious bad-faith actor isn't a very healthy or useful perspective to take. Yes, there's a lot of PR efforts directed at social media platforms for various reasons, but it's always best to just present a well-reasoned argument in support of your views and leave it at that.
- walterbell 4y agoAdditional search terms: Information Operations (IO) Influence Operations (IO) Inform and Influence Activities (IIA) Interactive Internet Activities (IIA) https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ > Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein, a close Obama adviser ... wrote a controversial paper in 2008 proposing that the US government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-”independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites ... also proposed sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups” which spread what he views as false and damaging “conspiracy theories” about the government. 2015 review, https://medium.com/secret-politics/trolls-on-the-astroturf-4168261f0f15 https://medium.com/secret-politics/trolls-on-the-astroturf-4... > The internet is a remarkable gift, which has granted us one of the greatest democratic opportunities since universal suffrage. We’re in danger of losing this global commons as it comes under assault from an army of trolls and flacks, many of them covertly organised or trained ... Only a powerful public campaign against state secrecy and private sector deception can thwart the rise of the trolls. This is a bridge we must cross now.
- paulpauper 4y agoIf a very sensitive posting of a critical nature has been posted on a forum - it can be quickly removed from public view by 'forum sliding.' In this technique a number of unrelated posts are quietly prepositioned on the forum and allowed to 'age.' Each of these misdirectional forum postings can then be called upon at will to trigger a 'forum slide.' The second requirement is that several fake accounts exist, which can be called upon, to ensure that this technique is not exposed to the public. To trigger a 'forum slide' and 'flush' the critical post out of public view it is simply a matter of logging into each account both real and fake and then 'replying' to prepositined postings with a simple 1 or 2 line comment. This brings the unrelated postings to the top of the forum list, and the critical posting 'slides' down the front page, and quickly out of public view. Although it is difficult or impossible to censor the posting it is now lost in a sea of unrelated and unuseful postings. By this means it becomes effective to keep the readers of the forum reading unrelated and non-issue items. Except if someone bumps it again it means you need to make a bunch of new replies again, which will look suspicious and be a lot of work. Also, it would still be indexable in google.
- oehpr 4y agoThis doesn't even seem like a viable strategy. When you're on forms and you're discussing a topic you're interested in, you add that thread to your watch list. You come back to the forum and check on updates for the threads you are participating in, no amount of sliding will hide that. And as long as you're not replying too late, you're not necroing, no matter how much the thread has slid. You'd have to play this game before a thread even kicks off. And the amount of posts before the thread pages? And how fast you'd have to make them? Hard to hide that.
- revolvingocelot 4y agoFWIW I've seen this term used more when discussing *chans, and less traditional forums. I think cognizance of the temporally-sorted nature of those imageboards makes the practice of "forum sliding" that much more alarming -- but that nature also makes the prospect of "forum sliding" almost inherently conspiratorial. How can one prove that activity that moves a thread off the front page (and thus probabilistically dooms it to irrelevance) is the result of some co-ordinated effort or the natural process of people using the forum?
- ryandrake 4y agoIn contrast to all the dubiously useful AI applications springing up lately, one that would be great is an AI that can reliably and accurately detect bots, shills, astroturf, disguised advertisements and other sponsored content masquerading as organic. I’d install a browser plug-in that could put a warning under comments and tweets that are detected as fake or a bad faith actor.
- kache_ 4y agoI would totally pay for this Even just a slight deboost to "probability of shill". I'm good enough at noticing it myself, but not until I wasted 5 seconds reading their post.
- oehpr 4y agoI would as well... but how would you actually target an actual shill? You'd need a dataset of confirmed shills. If you have a dataset of people who you speculate to be shills, doesn't that trend close to a dataset of people who's opinion you don't like? To be clear, I'm not saying that wouldn't be personally valuable... but uh, if I was creating a system like this for myself, I'd curate that dataset VERY carefully (assuming I could even get the system to work :\\\)
- anigbrowl 4y agoThere's a lot of research papers on this topic and you can detects some kinds of bad behavior consistently, but mostly involving spamming. Sophisticated information operations distribute the work across multiple participants, and the technological side of it is a constantly evolving arms race.
- Gabriel_Martin 4y agoOh wow it's like a rare free pass to talk about shills here on HN :)
- cr4nberry 4y agoThe easiest way to spot it (at least for me) is to pay attention to how you feel when reading a forum. If you get super pissed off or anxious while reading, there's a chance you're getting screwed with An example: the other day I read a NYT article that seemed like it was almost designed to be irritating. It was so irritating that I was about to subscribe just to comment on how stupid the author was, but then I realized I had my credit card out. Then I realized that I was the stupid one and put the card away Forum agitators will almost always go for your emotions (because it scales better). How to solve this? Don't go to online places that fuck with your head. Go to the places that tend to be less emotionally charged, less groupthink oriented, and more boring. I.e. the reuters of social media
- MattDemers 4y ago> like it was almost designed to be irritating "Almost designed" is the key here.
- keepquestioning 4y agoHow likely is Ghislaine Maxwell to be on reddit?
- dang 4y agoRelated: The Gentleperson's Guide to Forum Spies (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21165313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21165313 - Oct 2019 (10 comments) The Gentleperson's Guide To Forum Spies (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7329162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7329162 - March 2014 (33 comments) The Gentleperson's Guide To Forum Spies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4277278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4277278 - July 2012 (57 comments) Should I list the Simple Sabotage Manual threads too?
- Fervicus 4y agoEasiest way to see psyops and narrative control in action is to go look at all the deleted comments from any of the popular subreddits. If dissent gets you banned then you know something is wrong.
- rongopo 4y agoThis is influencing the world more than what we want to believe.
- netmonk 4y agoThe ancestrors of #nafo #nofakemeds and so on. May be next article will talk about the practice of Hasbara and Israel... let's wait and see.