There are paid shills who target anyone that goes against the establishment. They also have a downvoting bot.

They aren't just the shills, people attacking with 5+ year accounts.

They can fake those numbers too

How? I get buying older accounts is a thing, but can you fake the age?

Admin access for authorized individuals. Easy as that. Its sanctioned

Using RES (reddit enhancement suite) makes a big difference just with the ability to tag users as you see fit. It can be entertaining to read through a post/comments and see the comment patterns and the narrative of the day/week of those you've tagged vs those organic users (often in the green with updoots); things become very clear and quite predictable.

It's best to downvote and move along without engaging since they've failed if they can't distract or bait legit users into arguing with them.

This. RES has improved my experience here tremendously!

Yup. It's a vicious cycle. Shills/trolls bait users into arguments/name calling, the user gets banned, the troll/shill does not. User creates a new account, same thing happens with a bit more vitriol, ad infinitum. If you're a regular here, it's easy to spot the provocateurs/agitators.

Yep. It's my goal to engage them and watch them shoot themselves. /u/tumpetsablaze made an acct specifically to bait Trump followers into breaking the rules then he called for their ban. He's banned now =) 1 down.

Yeah, buddy! I do the same :)

Bullshit. The_donald just got caught last week for using bots to copy and paste comments all very this sub. The paid shills you're afraid of are the ones that agree with you.

That was my post, and you're misrepresenting the facts

Who's bots were they then?

We don't know. Yes, the bots were copying posts from T_D, but we don't know who the creator was or what their motivations were. We can speculate that someone just wanted to spam t_d stuff here, but there are other possibilities as well. We simply don't know enough to make any conclusions

Who is paying these 'shills'? And why? And how could somebody get a job there?

Share blue is paying the shills.

Or they're sucking Koch brothers dick.

Big pharma hires shills, Monsanto hires shills, politicians hire shills, energy industry hires shills. Even education sector hires shills. Pretty much any business that has a public relations problem hires shills to as a PR campaigne.

Where do I sign up to become a paid shill?

You are willing to sell your soul for $12 an hour?

Agreed, happened to me yesterday.

Its all subs. Some more than others

Yep. People are pretty negative these days. I don't blame them. Poor diet, lack of sunlight, too much death and destruction on TV entering their subconscious. Not good.

This same self post is posted almost weekly now. Just filter out the obvious shill submissions and discrediting comments and you're good to go.

Shills tend to be condescending.

I hate shills from all sides, because it makes it hard for people like me who just want a civil discussion about different issues and posts.

When CTR came out, I was pissed because I knew immediately what was going to happen, with anyone that was anti-Trump being accused of being a shill.

CTR shills of course exist, but it's hard to differentiate between shills and legitimate people.

They should be required to disclosed who they are affiliated with.

Agreed.

That would be the astroturfing - they are just doing their job.

Does anyone have a good alternate sub for this one?

This is our home, we have to stay and defend it.

Shills come here to antagonize and make it a shitty experience so real users stop coming. Their plan is to either take over this sub or kill it.

And I mean ShareBlue.

Well, yeah, many of the comments are negative, but we've got some really flakey posters in here these days. It's hard not to get impatient with them.

True conspiracy theorists have open minds imo, and it is this trait that brings us together here.

Shills are therefore easy to spot.

Divisive. Close minded. Condescending. Disingenuous. Etc

Tag these guys accordingly and move on, although we have to be careful not to become an echo chamber.

ShareBlue

Nope. You're not alone.

They can fake those numbers too

How? I get buying older accounts is a thing, but can you fake the age?

That was my post, and you're misrepresenting the facts