I always thought secrecy was maintained by a 'ring of silence' (AKA they have blackmail on each other, so if one gets exposed, they all do, so they'll fight to the bitter end and then kill if the risk is too high)?
How do they identify RC status? Background check?
>Its important to realize that ALL the tactics outlined through the thread, have been used on every platform, forum, and board since the public began using the internet on a large scale. What they are TRYING TO DO NOW on /qresearch they already did through the 2000s on every other internet discussion space.
You've caught on to how extensive it's been. I'm an old hand from 2010 (conspiracy forums) so I've been battling these types of shills non-stop. Q is right when he says the attacks are a type of 'badge' because shills only attack you on topics they really don't want you to discuss.
You'll notice the media employ the EXACT same tactics as shills. Spam. Repetition. Ignoring facts that don't match their narrative. Strawman arguments. Cherry quoting. Taking out of context. Semantics. Skewering datasets. Misinterpretation of data. Threats. Purposefully picking bad examples. Exaggeration.
You might even say they are all informed by the same agency/organisation on how to work.
The tactics since 2000 have greatly evolved. Prior to that time you'd just have a few dudes who would clog up usernet forums with pseudo-skeptism bullshit (AKA 'denialism' - never accepting any contrary facts), some of those people are still around even on modern boards (you want to look for the middle-aged 'old fuddy-duddies' or 'middle-management types who want to be hip with the kids, yo').
These days it's substantially more advanced. Software that allows rapid posting across multiple social media accounts (notice they all share login data? Makes it easier for the socks, too), with pre-loaded talking points you copy/paste or cherry-pick.
Different organisations have different capabilities. Some have AI that can 'suggest' a recommended rebuttal based on an analysis of the post. Others have near-full automation (it's a Q and A script at it's heart but I think more modern developments are trying to shoehorn neural networks).
The most astonishing thing I've seen recently is what appears to be a bot that basically learns from people's rebuttals to it, and then uses parts of those insults, comments to attack others on other boards (I recently discovered a Media Matters poster quoting a line of insult I throw at them on another forum, on /pol/, and I encountered at least two examples of this).
The end goal is to bog you down in unproductive time wasting exercises fighting bots, whilst making a thread unapproachable to the public by flooding it with either doubt or spam.
The one thing I've seen them absolutely terrified of (wouldn't touch it with a barge pole) was an administration that has no issues investigating IPs, exposing sock posters, and enforcing strict rules on research.
If you get past the shills, the next stage is extremely dirty law enforcement tactics (EG frame-up, evidence planting, entrapment, baiting into a crime, etc), classically targeted at the forum administration. If you've historically committed what could be turned into a crime, they will do their best to dig it out, just to justify a forum takeover.
You all saw what happened to 'halfchan', right?
(Did you?)
>So ASF is Apache Software Foundation?
PHP.
What did Hillary Clinton's servers run on?
I bet it wasn't secured.
…Oh wait.