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Comment by thomasz | Hacker News Reader

Yea, they have an entire army dedicated to nothing but trolling the brave enemies of the state who converge at places like www.abovetopsecret.com and dailypail.com. FFS. Those places are a pit of back stabbing, turf wars, elaborated socket puppetry and so on because they attract a crowd that is borderline crazy, and a few trolls preying on them.

If you build a place for destructive and often psychotic people, you would need a dedicated three letter agency to prevent them from going on each others throat.

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The point that's being made is that it's not that hard to disrupt a functioning online community, so you wouldn't even need an army. You could probably do it with a staff of a dozen or less, and honestly looking at how places like reddit and slashdot have transformed over the years I really wouldn't be surprised if there was at least some influence by government agencies(how do those same 5 military propaganda images keep getting to the front page? I'd also be curious to see how those getting to the frontpage compares to recruitment needs for the military. Not saying that it's a conspiracy, but it would be an interesting thing to examine). The tone of those places has changed, and any intelligent, valid criticism of the status quo is consistently ignored and rallied against. I don't know if it's just because people are by and large impulsive and unable to handle criticism, or because of a conspiracy, but the former lends itself to control by the latter.

It would be a bit naive to rule it out completely, but it would be pretty silly to say for certain that it's a conspiracy.

The author simply observes some negative tendencies in online communities that can easily explained by simple social dynamics and asserts that sinister cabal is responsible. That is his whole point, and he doesn't argue very good. For the love of god, look at the first point! FORUM SLIDING my ass. To make that work, you'd have to fake a dozen threads to drown a real one. And you'd have fake them convincingly, or they would simply be ignored.

I don't want to get overly confrontational, but your lament about reddit's decline goes into the same direction. That community has grown by a thousandfold. It's self image of a salon for educated and cultivated discourse is a sick joke. You don't need a conspiracy to explain how those pictures show up on the front page. They carry a simple, emotional message. Reddit's user base likes them, as they like rage comics, pictures of cute animals, stupid memes and rape jokes.

>how do those same 5 military propaganda images keep getting to the front page?

I don't subscribe to the front page reddits anymore, could you tell me what images you mean?

Your second point undermines the first. Essentially, you are making the case that the government should monitor and attempt to pacify groups of crazies.

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