Sometimes people who disagree with you just disagree with you, and are not astroturf spies sent by the CIA.

If you hold an unpopular opinion, people may want to marginalize your opinion by claiming that you aren't a real person.

Unfortunately, there really are dedicated and heavy operations by government organizations and corporations to try and sabotage debate. These operations are well recorded, especially corporations such as Microsoft and Samsung who are well known for it. It's just a fact of online forums. Of course, it's also a fact that a lot of people obviously hold diverse opinions. It is just plain impossible to be able to reliably tell the difference between astroturfing, trolling and genuine opinions.

Honestly, the best solution is simply to state your argument and leave as back and forth debating is generally useless. This applies in both the case where you are arguing against someone who appears to be astroturfing and where you are in the position of having an unpopular opinion. You're just wasting both your time and others with pointless arguments. HN is pretty good on this point by having that 'deep thread cooldown'.

If everybody follows the "state your argument and leave" rule then you don't have a discussion forum at all...

I doubt he'll come back to answer you on this...

But you still have the advantage of seeing that point of view stated.

  | "These operations are well recorded"

I'm curious about these, can you provide any links?

If an opinion echos the line pushed by propagandists and PR firms, would you be more likely to be skeptical of it? Would you start looking for the polished turd, the pig with lipstick on? After all, if nobody was influenced to parrot those lines, the PR firm would find itself out of business.

Yeah, sometimes that is true but off topic of the linked documentation which outlines in detail how to derail discussions, much like your point. You are peripherally correct but off topic and easily refutable, so many points! Well done sir.

Some people here scoff at the idea that COINTELPRO-type operations are still under way. What do they say now about the dirty tricks campaigns recently revealed?

> Some people here scoff at the idea that COINTELPRO-type operations are still under way

Given the sheer scale of pseudonymous commentary in internet fora in recent years, the attitude that "it can't be happening" is naive to the point of utter ridiculousness. Quietly steering the public conversation is an obvious and attractive idea to any existing power. And inexpensive to try out.

It helps that US recently passed a law that allows the government to spread propaganda in US. And you just know that when something like that gets passed, it's probably been happening for at least 5-10 years.

When the government passes laws that help itself or corporations, much of the time it is retroactive. To legitimize illegal or quasi-legal things that are already occurring.

I don't understand how a democracy can function with retroactive laws. With enough power, all actions can be legitimized in the future.

This reads like black propaganda.

If you're politically active in any meaningful way, it's smart to realize that you're probably under surveillance.

It's not smart to start accusing people who 'Display banners with too many words that are confusing' of being saboteurs.

John Young has been at this for years, and has drawn flak from all governments from the information that he has been posting to his site, so I wouldn't call it black propaganda (nor take everything presented here as an absolute guide), but I pretty much agree with everything else you said. His self proclaimed "amateur"[0] ways seems to me to be quite effective especially when sensitive information does get posted (which are cached,copied elsewhere, and removes the motive elements that are with other organizations/people that do similar things) before he gets the take-down requests. Though I have to admit, some of the things that have (not) happened to him compared to others like him make me wonder…

[0]: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20011106-281.html

That article is from 2010, but it is interesting that his doors hadn't even at that point been kicked down in a no-knock raid or three. It has happened to gov't critics for less.

I feel like a lot of the techniques are used by non-agents, like straw man or acting indignant of what have you. I know I'm guilty of it looking back. Certain techniques though are deliberate enough, like forum sliding.

It would be fun to take the HN database and do an automated search for the use of such techniques.

I wonder if there is a database or list of known forum accounts who have practiced these techniques? Would be useful for modelling.

A detector for such techniques would make a wonderful standard tool for all forums everywhere.

Run all media through it. Assign a "bullshit rating" to stuff.

Sounds like the way newspapers/media organisations over time try to shift the debate towards their preferred position - contentiously attacking "gold plated" public sector pensions with some what dubious statistics.

(2012). This is not a Snowden leak, as I mistook it at first.

Correct but the 2014 PDF links at the top of the page corroborate this info and as far as I know, they are both Snowden leaks. The gchq-online-deception.pdf is particularly scary to read in terms of how the information is presented, let alone the subject matter.

Later leaks including Snowden have further corroborated this foil hat nonsense.

What do you mean by "foil hat nonsense"?

Why isn't your user name visible? How did you do that???

It required no effort on my part.

Yeah, how do I know you're even the same person if I can't see your name? Maybe lots of people can hide their names, for all I know! This is as bad as talking with anonymous cowards on slashdot, dammit.

Would that be tin or aluminum foil hat nonsense?

I prefer wood foil. Just punch eye holes in a brown paper bag. I am wearing one now so that the NSA cannot identify me through my webcam.

That's the same thing my sexual partners insist on. But they always insist I wear two, just in case one tears off.

But they know where you shop!

… this is just social engineering. I'm missing something, why is this news? ;-)