The shills and bots are winning.

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[–]LarrySwinger2 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (12 children)

It's a scary thought. Does the immediate link clicking reveal them to be bots, though? It could be that the shills have scripts in place that do automated posting, while it's still primarily a human that makes the comments. It could be that they use software that simply clicks links for analytical purposes.

To what degree do you guys think this is going on here? Are some of the shills, such as Chipit, actually bots? I'm looking at his comments a little bit. He resorts to personal attacks, and refrains from refuting anything. His comments are very similar to each other, especially the personal attacks he makes. And when he gets called out for anything, he never defends himself properly. His commenting really is of a level that AIs must be capable of.

Comments are more telling than posts, but we can infer things from posts as well. Chipit is guilty of voatification, posting headlines that this site's userbase would welcome, but it's always the most polarizing stuff, and he makes it more polarizing on top of that through deceptive titles. Here's a recent example. Unto itself, the title seems to follow his trend of first giving the actual title of an article he's linking to, and then giving a short summary. When you click it, you discover that it's just a short entertainment video that invites you to laugh at a protester, instead of having actual content. The title isn't an appropriate description at all. So where does it come from? It turns out to be assembled from the video title, the first line of its description, and a random comment to the video, all concatenated. Who comes up with that idea? It really is bot-like behavior.

I've posted another example 5 months ago here.

It's starting to make sense to me. Why would adversaries pay people to comment on sites like these full time when they can just pay devs once to write and train AIs to do then do it for free?

[–]JasonCarswell 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

Great insights!!! Saved!

I also think Chipit may have a human driving him at times, though perhaps that's just occasional better A.I. too.

Ping /u/Tom_Bombadil

[–]LarrySwinger2 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

I agree. There are times when you'll want to give him the benefit of the doubt. But when I analyze his post history at a random moment, he seems like a bot, and that's telling.

[–]JasonCarswell 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

You blew my mind this morning. It makes many of our semi-nonsensical "conversations" make more sense.

I wonder if they know that because they are semi-nonsensical they piss people off more? Is there a threshold where people just check out and don't bother with them? Is there a fine line where you can string people along for a while yet also piss them off? Makes me wonder.

[–]Jesus 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Chipit never debates me, like ever.

[–]JasonCarswell 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Me either really. Sure he's replied a few times to my attacks, but never in a way that made sense. And he trolls on occasion.

I'm now convinced he's a tribalist shill bot, unable to debate. I'm actually very embarrassed I didn't see what Larry pointed out before this. But to give myself some credit, I don't give a shit about Chipit and don't spend much time thinking about him. I already wrote him off long ago and simply consider him only a danger to simpler minds and occasional visitors on SaidIt.

Chipit is like annoying poison ivy in our woods.

[–]Node[S] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (6 children)

One of the theories on what's happening there is bots doing the grunt work, with teams of humans backing them up. Similar to robo calls, where the human only steps in once a live one is on the hook.

Are some of the shills, such as Chipit, actually bots?

How can he have time to spend all day everyday posting links on saidit? The human/bot hybrid theory makes a lot of sense, both to explain what's happening, and from an efficiency and effectiveness perspective.

[–]LarrySwinger2 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

I just assumed they were minimum wage workers.

[–]Node[S] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

I realized while looking at your 5 month old link I haven't seen /u/Tom_Bombadil[ lately. It's been about 2 weeks, but hopefully he's just on vacation or something. Come back, Tom!

Your theory could be valid. I don't know much about the internet propaganda industry. Used to have a call center in SF back in the old days. We paid the workers a minimum wage, with some compensation for each successful sale. It was a pretty marginal lot though.

We made 50 bucks per sale, with a 30%+ success rate from the lists we were getting. I'm not immediately seeing a source of profit from paying people to back up comment bots on the internet (reddit, faceberg, etc) unless it's more about political propaganda. Paying someone to post on saidit would seem to be particularly unprofitable.

[–]LarrySwinger2 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

To clarify: my previous assumption was that users like Dipshit are minimum wage workers, and it's now dawning on me that they're more likely to be mostly bots, with perhaps a human co-piloting now and then.

[–]JasonCarswell 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I was thinking that myself. I had assumed /u/Tom_Bombadil was still standoffish at me for the drama I caused exposing M7. Tom was thinking that I was could be a long-con disruption agent of some kind. Anything's possible I suppose. Perhaps M7 is a limited hangout, a LEO who's got a few dozen truth-seekers addict-trapped in his forum that he's determined not to improve. Anything's possible. Too much effort for so little payoff doesn't make sense in either scenario. It'd be cheaper and easier to hire a hitman to take out the leaders and non-anons like me.

It could also be that Tom is gardening more or something in the good weather. Maybe he's doing better with his resources than I am.

would seem to be particularly unprofitable.

Destroying the economy would seem to be particularly unprofitable. Yet they're doing it on purpose.

We all do better when we all do better. But the ruling class never wants that. They want it all to themselves. So, we all do worse when we all do worse - except for them. They print money and bail themselves and their friends out.

It's going to get worse too.

[–]JasonCarswell 2 insightful - 3 fun2 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

How can he have time to spend all day everyday posting links on saidit?

LOL. This applies to some of us humans too. (And subhuman shills like socks also.)

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free for UBI.”

[–]Node[S] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Well, I can't because I've diversified onto so many other sites. I would be making tens of thousands daily if I were still in my long gone consulting business. But it's all just killing time now.

Socks could actually be one of those bot/human partnerships. There's definitely a human there some of the time, but other times it's exactly like it's a bot posting.