Ron Paul Forums and Paid Disinformation Agents

My post on The Ron Paul Discussion Forum Schism has been surprisingly popular. I'm always surprised by the popularity of my posts. The posts I expect to be popular are hardly read at all. My most popular posts are completely unexpected ones. For example, my post on The Voting Scam has been my most popular post, by a wide margin, even though I thought I was just stating the obvious. My post on Anarcho-Capitalism, Agorism, and Fasco-Capitalism is one of my favorite posts, but it's hardly been read at all.

My readers have declared their preferences. Technically, my Google Analytics stats have indicated their preferences. If people are interested in articles about Ron Paul, then I should write about his campaign more. This issue has me particularly offended. I'm writing about sabotage and Ron Paul Internet discussion forums.

It is well-known that the government plants spies in citizen activist groups. For example, in Fahrenheit 9/11, there was a story of a policeman who had been planted as a spy in a pacifist group. The people who think they control the government desire to control every activist group, even nonviolent ones.

Following the same reasoning, the government also plants spies in Internet discussion forums. Planting a spy in an Internet discussion is far easier than planting a spy in person. One person can even assume multiple identities. If spreading disinformation is your full-time job, then it's very easy, especially when your "opponents" are writing in their spare time. Another advantage of professional Internet sabotage is that several people can operate the same identity, building that identity's reputation.

As soon as a discussion forum grows beyond a certain size, it's a tempting target for disinformation agents. Political discussion groups are particularly desirable targets. The Chinese government has the wrong idea. Why ban online discussion forums, when you can infiltrate them with spies! I guess the Chinese government isn't as skilled at such sabotage as the USA; perhaps they are concerned that US-supported disinformation agents would outperform them.

Ron Paul Internet discussion forums are necessarily a high priority target for infiltration and subversion.

Wikipedia is infested with paid disinformation agents. It is so bad that I now have a personal Wikipedia boycott. I still use it to look up information, but if I see an error I refuse to correct it. I refuse to link to Wikipedia. I have a separate post planned for the evils of Wikipedia, but I'll give an outline here. As the Wikiscanner project showed, corporations edit Wikipedia for the purpose of censorship and disinformation. However, that's only the tip of the iceberg. If you log onto Wikipedia as a registered user, your IP address is hidden and your anonymity is protected. This enables professional disinformation agents to work multiple identities without suspicion. The Wikiscanner project only caught the truly clueless paid disinformation agents.

Wikipedia's rules were determined by a "democratic" vote. The average Wikipedia visitor is not even aware of such a thing. The average Wikipedia visitor assumes that the site rules are well-designed, and did not bother to vote. The professional disinformation agents were loud advocates in the development of Wikipedia's rules. This ensured that Wikipedia's rules would encourage the spread of disinformation. For example, the "reliable sources" policy means that ideas censored by mainstream news sources cannot be mentioned at all! The "no original research" policy means that new ideas cannot be mentioned at all. The average person, who finds themself in an edit war, gives up and moves on. The Strawman Fallacy and The Stubborn Clueless Fool Fallacy are built into Wikipedia's site rules!

At this point, I consider Wikipedia to be useful only for non-controversial topics. Wikipedia's site rules guarantee that the bias of controversial topics will always be in favor of the mainstream media viewpoint. For example, the Compound Interest Paradox has been completely censored by mainstream information sources. The Compound Interest Paradox would never meet Wikipedia's content standards.

Wikipedia users have "automatic spam removal" bots that are also used as "automatic censorship bots". Non-approved content is immediately and automatically edited back out.

It is not surprising that the Ron Paul Internet discussion forums are also under attack by paid disinformation agents. There are trolls planted specifically for the purpose of disrupting discussion. There are four controversial topics heavily-discussed on Ron Paul Internet forums. The Supreme Leader of Humanity's agents are trying to prevent a rational discussion of these topics. These topics are:

1. The 9/11 Truth Movement
2. The Evils of the Federal Reserve
3. The Evils of the Income Tax
4. The Evils of Excessive Government Regulations

The bad guys do *NOT* want to see these topics openly discussed and debated.

It's hard to be 100% sure. Some of these people may be genuinely clueless. It's too well coordinated to be an accident. I think it's deliberate sabotage.

I'm explicitly calling out user "cjhowe" from the Ron Paul Discussion Forum as being a paid disinformation agent. Two separate users on the Ron Paul Forum, redpillguy and Mike Mitrosky, have complained to me about him. You can search for all posts by cjhowe and decide for yourself.

A common tactic for paid disinformation agents is to identify people with a clue (i.e., people like me) and cyberstalk them. Whenever I post something about the Federal Reserve, cjhowe can use the "show all posts by user" feature to make sure he sees my posts and disrupts the discussion. On Wikipedia, I once had someone automatically following my edits and reverting them out.

Consider cjhowe's posts in this thread on the Federal Reserve, this thread denouncing Federal Reserve conspiracy theories, and this thread on the Federal Reserve. This is a perfect example of someone using The Stubborn Clueless Fool Fallacy to disrupt discussion. These tactics confuse people who don't fully understand this issues.

It seems incredible to me that someone who claims to support Ron Paul's campaign would be such an aggressive defender of the Federal Reserve, the IRS, and big government. Ron Paul has explicitly and clearly stated that he wants to abolish the Federal Reserve and the IRS. It is extremely likely that cjhowe is a paid disinformation agent. I suspect he has other identities on that forum that he uses as sockpuppets. With multiple identities, you can appear to be several people spreading disinformation. I am not 100% convinced that cjhowe is a paid disinformation agent, but it's a serious enough possibility to be worth mentioning. He may sincerely be a stubborn clueless fool.

The proper solution is for someone to write a new type of online discussion forum engine. The problem with most engines is that the "moderation score" of a post is a globally assigned value. For example, on Digg, every post has a single global rating. If my preferences don't match the aggregate preferences of Digg users as a whole, then I won't like the content presented on Digg. For example, a lot of people were aggressively Digg-ing articles on Ron Paul. A lot of people got tired of seeing so many Ron Paul articles and automatically bury Ron Paul articles now. The problem is that Digg assigns a single global rating to each article. The Ron Paul junkies should still see every Ron Paul article when they visit Digg. People who have decided they are no longer interested should be able to filter out those users' Diggs, and filter for Diggs of users they like. If my preferences match those of 10 or 50 other users, then what I see should emphasize what they have chosen to Digg or bury.

Wikipedia has the same problem. Its "page editing" feature and "page moderation" feature are mixed together. Ideally, they should be divorced. There should be a moderation system, page branching system, and multiple versions of each page. Users would see the version of the page most tailored to their personal interests.

I don't have the spare time to write such an engine right now. If someone else is interested, I would help them. A properly written forum/wiki/Digg engine would prevent professional trolls from disrupting the site. People would only see content posted by people whose interests match theirs. People could manually specify which other users they respect and disrespect, or the engine could perform matching for them.

I consider the main point of this post to be a warning about paid disinformation agents in general. However, putting it into the specific context of Ron Paul Internet discussion forums should offend people more directly.

Paid disinformation agents are a really serious problem. Paid disinformation agents are everywhere. Paid disinformation agents are on TV, in newspapers, on Wikipedia, on Digg, or on an Internet discussion forum. I am deeply offended to see paid disinformation agents on Ron Paul Internet discussion forums. I have enough experience with them to know them when I see them; other people with less experience are easily rattled by The Stubborn Clueless Fool Fallacy. Hopefully, I have helped educate other people about the serious problem of paid disinformation agents.