
Techniques for dilution, misdirection and control of a internet forum (2012) - buserror
http://pastebin.com/irj4Fyd5
======
stupidcar
This reads less like a genuine guide to a disrupting a forum, and more like an
imitation of one, produced by a participant of such a conspiracy/anti-
government forum or some such, in an attempt to convince others that such
activity was happening. As if the author was upset at the typical properties
and pathologies of such forums frustrating his attempts to push his own
agenda, and decided they must be the result of a co-ordinated effort to
disrupt it. Like fringe political groups that are obsessed by the bogeyman of
establishment infiltrators, not realising their own true believers' lunacy and
internecine tendencies is often far more disruptive to their efforts.

~~~
jnbiche
Agreed. Not enough obscure acronyms for a genuine government document, and
insufficient count of the word "cyber".

~~~
Elrac
Also, poor spelling. I'd expect members of an intelligence community to be
more [drum roll] intelligent. "precidence" instead of "precedent?" Really?

And this, I think, is an even bigger giveaway: "... and no longer useful in
maintaining their freedoms." "Freedoms" is one of the hot-button words of
conspiracy theorists. As far as I've been able to tell, even the most heavily
oppressive American 3 letter thugs tell themselves that they are indeed
struggling to _preserve_ the citizens' freedoms.

------
cryoshon
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.

~~~
krapp
What it describes as the behavior of shills and government agents, though, are
also common behaviors on anonymous forums. It seems designed as flamebait for
/x/ or Usenet, because if you take it seriously then inevitably you'll see
conspiracies everywhere.

~~~
cryoshon
I think that it shines as a "consider the following when assessing other forum
users". Knowing the tricks of deception attunes you to people's witting or
unwitting attempts to use them, which will improve your ability to form good
arguments and also argue against ideas which you disagree with.

------
openfuture
Why are we talking about this as a conspiracy to incite distrust in
governments?

It's just what it says it is; "techniques for dilution, misdirection and
control of an internet forum". It doesn't matter where it came from or who
actually uses the techniques described.

Shouldn't the discussion be more about the effectiveness of these strategies
and their repercussions?

Anyway I agree that the spelling is poor and an anonymous pastebin isn't a
very authoritative source but there's still content there.

Also reading the point of view of 'paranoids' (for lack of better term) can be
intriguing, see:
[http://stealthiswiki.tk/wiki.stealthiswiki.org/wiki/Main_Pag...](http://stealthiswiki.tk/wiki.stealthiswiki.org/wiki/Main_Page.html)

Edit: the discussion changed while I was writing this, disregard the first
thing I said :P

------
flipp3r
Can't wait to see some comments on this one. Posts like these are dividing HN.

~~~
mbrutsch
Anyone with anything mildly divisive to say left HN long ago.

~~~
jnbiche
What would be something "divisive", in your opinion? I think some very
divisive topics are discussed fairly regularly here, among them:

1\. Gender politics

2\. NSA/surveillance

3\. Vim/Emacs

And I could name at least 2-3 regular commenters on HN who fall pretty cleanly
into each of the opposing sides of these issues (ok, maybe not Emacs, but all
the others).

Just because we're not degenerating into flame wars doesn't mean we don't
discuss divisive topics.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
There's a lot of populations on HN. Some of us avoid those topics like the
plague. So no general indictment can be made.

Those topics are poisonous because they can't be driven to a conclusion in two
paragraphs or less. And most everything's been said, so they run in circles
rehashing tired points. Not to say they aren't important topics. But it takes
an essay of 100 pages to cover all the ground, or a PhD even. But everybody
has opinions, often based on whatever they just were thinking about. Their
arguments come off as sophomoric (which they mostly are). Folks point that
out, and away they spin.

~~~
mbrutsch
> Those topics are poisonous because they can't be driven to a conclusion in
> two paragraphs or less.

They are poison on voting sites because one side quickly becomes grey. Votes
do nothing but squelch conversation, and many choose to self-censor to avoid
that.

------
kriro
The second part reminds me of Schopenhauer's "Eristische Dialektik" (discourse
stratagems):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Being_Right](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Being_Right)

~~~
seriocomic
The 2nd part also jumped out at me too for it's similarity to every
politician's response to any given question.

------
padobson
I've been using forums of one kind or another for nearly twenty years.

So my question is, how much of what I believe was planted there by somebody
using this stuff?

~~~
cryoshon
Probably at least some. It's not such a big deal, though. Pretty much everyone
in modern society is operating on a set of ideas that were 99.99% not their
own. The trick is evaluating the placed-ideas and then replacing them with
better ideas if they aren't working.

