How many astroturfers are here?

[taylortyler]

Been noticing a lot of posts lately that could be seen as an attempt to undermine Bitcoin, and I can help but wonder what the motives are. Although, they could just be curious bitcoiners genuinely wondering if the NSA created bitcoin.

We know for a fact that Bitcoin threatens many extremely powerful people and organizations. Entire industries that are essential to maintaining global domination and control are at risk because of Bitcoin. We also know for a fact that the US government and organizations hire e-armies of people to spread propaganda and perform reputation management on the interwebs.

So, how many people here are working for various government and banking agencies in an attempt to discredit bitcoin? Go ahead and identify yourselves. BCT admins...do you have an opinion on this? How many US House of Rep IP addresses have you identified posting here?

Do you think that TPTB feel threatened enough to even pursue such tactics?

[bbeesley]

I could tell you but then I would have to kill you

[Skoupi]

From all the astroturfers that promote scams and altcoins what caught your attention is people talking about conspiracy theories?

[taylortyler]

From all the astroturfers that promote scams and altcoins what caught your attention is people talking about conspiracy theories?

Why does that surprise you?

[JohnFromWIT]

From all the astroturfers that promote scams and altcoins what caught your attention is people talking about conspiracy theories?

Why does that surprise you?

Must be a witch.
Prepare the bonfire.

[commandrix]

If I am an astroturfer at all, I am an astroturfer for the idea that we could be doing a lot more to make Bitcoin the accepted way to do business online. I was just dripping suggestions that Bitcoin is a good thing on the (semi-)official Facebook group for Mars One candidates when somebody started a discussion about alternatives to Paypal for donations to Mars One. I've been ignoring the idea that the CIA/NSA is behind Bitcoin because they might get away with controlling Bitcoin until we get another Snowden, but they couldn't do anything about all the altcoins that derived from Bitcoin or upgraded the technology in some way.

[dKingston]

Although, they could just be curious bitcoiners genuinely wondering if the NSA created bitcoin.

I can almost guarantee that the NSA conspiracy theory threads are due to the fact that the "Alex" guy recently somewhat "endorsed" bitcoin. He seems kind of like a nutjob and these kind of theories sound like the kind of thing that he would say. It would be possible that some of his followers had purchased accounts to post these kind of theories, or people could have watched some of his youtube videos and believed the kind of things that he was saying. Regardless of what exactly is happening, it would say it is defiantly related. 

[Skoupi]

From all the astroturfers that promote scams and altcoins what caught your attention is people talking about conspiracy theories?

Why does that surprise you?

Because conspiracy theories are mostly harmless. Unlike schemes where people lose their money...

[franky1]

whomever invented it does not matter, it wont harm bitcoin at all.

but the reason i try to correct mindless Fud is more about trying to keep history straight and not have people in a couple years quoting liars to then keep the fake history from growing.

it isa known fact that 'satoshi' and a group of others all grabbed different theories and different concepts and discussed different methods. but it was 'satoshi' that combined 256k1 cryptography along with the mining block ledger building, and added the idea of decentralized bittorrent(p2p) to seamlessly combine together to make what we know as bitcoin.

this was not done as a hidden idea pre-designed behind closed doors and then released as a white paper. the discussions of it are publicly available including the reason to use 256k1 instead of r1.. (k1 being more efficient)

so this was not a NSA project released to the public, it was a public project conceived, evaluated and brought together by a group of people from the cryptography and peer-2-peer community. and satoshi was the lucky one to have brought it all together and white paper it.

so yea you will find in the sourcecode references to the MIT licence for cryptography, yea you will find references in the white paper linking to nick szabo, and yea you will find elements of where people like hal finney and gavin andressen and about 100 other people all with little bits that built up bitcoin as it is today.

but none of which means that these individual elements are 'satoshi'.

but as i say it dont matter who satoshi is. all that matters is what he brought to the world and how.

[taylortyler]

From all the astroturfers that promote scams and altcoins what caught your attention is people talking about conspiracy theories?

Why does that surprise you?

Because conspiracy theories are mostly harmless. Unlike schemes where people lose their money...

But conspiracies themselves can actually be very harmful...especially ones orchestrated by people in positions of extreme power.

[commandrix]

One should instead say that conspiracy theories are harmless unless people actually believe them. This goes way beyond conspiracy theorists getting themselves punched by someone they are intent on harassing. I've heard of people actually sabotaging the telephone equipment of neighbors whom they accused of listening in on their phone conversations. Didn't help that there used to be a very easy way for neighbors to do that called "party lines." How many of us would have adopted Bitcoin if it could actually be proven that the NSA created Bitcoin?

[Ron~Popeil]

Although, they could just be curious bitcoiners genuinely wondering if the NSA created bitcoin.

I can almost guarantee that the NSA conspiracy theory threads are due to the fact that the "Alex" guy recently somewhat "endorsed" bitcoin. He seems kind of like a nutjob and these kind of theories sound like the kind of thing that he would say. It would be possible that some of his followers had purchased accounts to post these kind of theories, or people could have watched some of his youtube videos and believed the kind of things that he was saying. Regardless of what exactly is happening, it would say it is defiantly related. 

I think you hit the nail on the head right there. The king of the conspiracy kooks has spoken and his followers are streaming into the bit coin world. 

[Omikifuse]

Yes, there are government paid trolls over the Internet, and I guess here too(obvioulsly they will deny they are one of them).

But the last wave of bitcoin was created by NSA/CIA was probably caused by a banned user apparently with personal disorders:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=727145.0

[QuestionAuthority]

The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.

A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an "online persona management service" that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/17/online-persona-management_n_837153.html

[mrcashking]

came to this thread to findout what an astroturfers is. haha

[bounst]

I could tell you but then I would have to kill you

just shut him up

[Bit_Happy]

The first HUGE wave of negative trolls came in June 2011, so when you see "Hero Member" there is no guarantee they are here for positive reasons.

[Whitehouse]

I never actually thought about there being paid agents here, but I guess it's very possible, but is bitcoin something they'd want to be spreading fud about at the moment? Maybe in the future it will become a problem to them.

The first HUGE wave of negative trolls came in June 2011, so when you see "Hero Member" there is no guarantee they are here for positive reasons.

Surely they didn't stick around and make a post every fortnight to become a Hero member. It's rare that you see a Troll Hero member as well.

[Bit_Happy]

That first wave of trolls (paid or not) was amazing, this forum quickly made a massive shift away from productive, "quality" conversations.
There is still plenty of good content here, but it is harder to find now.

...

The first HUGE wave of negative trolls came in June 2011, so when you see "Hero Member" there is no guarantee they are here for positive reasons.

Surely they didn't stick around and make a post every fortnight to become a Hero member. It's rare that you see a Troll Hero member as well.

You can be completely away for over a year and still have made "Hero", but you are correct that many of them probably have lower activity levels.

[guybrushthreepwood]

The first HUGE wave of negative trolls came in June 2011, so when you see "Hero Member" there is no guarantee they are here for positive reasons.

Surely they didn't stick around and make a post every fortnight to become a Hero member. It's rare that you see a Troll Hero member as well.

You can be completely away for over a year and still have made "Hero", but you are correct that many of them probably have lower activity levels.

You can be away but if you don't make a post every two weeks you wont magically become a Hero Member any sooner. It's not like you could be a noob, leave for a year, log back on and get all those activity points you missed. You still have to earn it. It's a good system.

And I can think of a few troll hero members, but none of them are really malicious, just annoying lol.