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[–]LarrySwinger2 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (5 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.