Bitcoin Forum

How many of these techniques have you seen on bitcointalk?

  http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-10-28/cointelpro-techniques-dilution-misdirection-and-control-internet-forum

Now, I don't believe the CIA/NSA/FooBarA is involved in this forum (aside from maybe assigning a few interns to lurk).  But I've seen all of these techniques used, and I'm pretty convinced there are at least a few parties with a gaggle of hired meatpuppets.  The "five hours or X posts" rule is ineffective against MechanicalTurk-style meatpuppetry.

The lack of any sort of upvote/downvote/reputation system makes all of this stuff work so much more easily, and the cryptic security-through-obscurity orange-ignore algorithm is not helping.  I agree with Theymos that reddit/stackexchange/slashdot style post-voting turns things into a competition for witty one-liners, but the current situation is only a very little bit better and is devolving rapidly.

There must be some sort of alternative.  Maybe a per-post version of the orange label, like "more than X% of the accounts which have viewed this post clicked the 'this is bullshit trolling' button".  Basically downvoting only (no upvoting) without displaying the score unless it's obviously very negative.

Interesting read. The effectiveness of such tactics depends on the forum. If the moderators know each other well and are somewhat, public as in here. It is harder to cue a forum. A forum with anonymous posters discussing illegal stuff would be an easier target for manipulation. BTW same tactics are used in politics all the time, so most of us have a nose for this.

OMG my life is a honeypot.

I'm pretty sure the number of conspiracy theorists outnumbers the number of government intelligence agency posters on this forum. Additionally, the CIA knew about Bitcoin around the time of the first price spike and before the second one. They've had ample time to account for it and don't need to troll the forums, IMHO.