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.
That's not true. I'm a troll hero member trained by the best (love you Matt
). A quality troll is difficult to spot. They don't start threads saying "Bitcoin sucks" or "why Bitcoin will fail". You need to make people really think and actively engage them. Get some on your side then slap them all in the end.
I have this account and three socks that are all hero. I try to keep each sock in a separate section of the forum and keep them from overlapping. This account mainly posts to bitcoin discussion. If you see posts in other sections from this account it's usually because they were moved by a mod to the correct section after I posted. Bruno has 5-6 socks but I think Phinn and Al the Alpaca are the only Hero's.