Hear hear. The shills are not hard to spot, down-vote them and do not play their game. Also up/downvote topics, especially ones that do not belong here, such as mainstream news or trollish self-conspiracy spam.

The shills are not hard to spot, down-vote them and do not play their game.

Is that really the proper way to approach opposing points of view?

Shills are farts in an elevator. You can't stop them, and you can't make the elevator smell nice again. But that's pretty much all a shill is.

argumentum ad ignorantiam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false, it is "generally accepted" (or vice versa). This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that there is insufficient investigation and therefore insufficient information to prove the proposition satisfactorily to be either true or false. Nor does it allow the admission that the choices may in fact not be two (true or false), but may be as many as four, (1) true, (2) false, (3) unknown between true or false, and (4) being unknowable (among the first three).[1] In debates, appeals to ignorance are sometimes used to shift the burden of proof.

The people with the opposing views tend to not know shit, are of low IQ, uninformed, close-minded, brainwashed by the media or obviously pushing an agenda and frankly, they don't belong here.

tldr: Yes.

That's a dangerous path to go down. You start associating certain arguments with "shills" and pretty soon you reject anyone who ever suggests those arguments because of that association.

Shills are easy enough to identify. They don't know the topics they're blindly defending. They cite bullshit contrived disinfo debunk sites. And they use all these tricks http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm seemingly via a flowchart.

Topic down-vote apocalypse noted.

So you think any time there's a troll or someone just fucking with us that they're automatically a forum spy/shill?

The people with the opposing views tend to not know shit, are of low IQ, uninformed, close-minded, brainwashed by the media or obviously pushing an agenda and frankly, they don't belong here.

Ok? You just described the vast majority of Reddit posters.

I'm really not even sure why you're copy pasting that, as it doesn't relate at all to my question. You can be an idiot, ignorant, close-minded and brainwashed by the media and also not be a shill.

i will try.... i have been fighting with a few of them the past couple weeks, im simply not letting them "win" if there is such a thing in the pathetic attempts they make. i have figured out that they argue in the same way my sisters did when they were teenagers..which i found out im extremely good at arguing that bs right back, experience pays off.

Any examples of these shills?

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Figured I'd start a new account for /r/conspiracy. You know, so the government can't trace me and send me off to jail for revealing the secrets of their plot to infiltrate conspiracy forums.

Oh, they'll trace you. ;) And I'm sure this has been posted here before

I've seen it but am not sure what it is supposed to imply. Logical fallacies imply shilling?

Edit: See how fast I replied? Must be a shill.

Haha, I don't think you're a shill. I understand not wanting your main reddit account to be "tainted" with posts in /r/conspiracy.

And the COINTELPRO link was meant to point out that forum communities are indeed being infiltrated, and the idea that "they wouldn't be concerned with silly forum posts, they have better things to do" is false.

Is there any evidence that that document is actually from COINTELPRO?

I have no doubt shills exist, it just amuses me how often people are accused of being shills for arguing an opposing point. Do people really think that there aren't enough Jews and Israelis to defend Israel of their own volition that Israel needs to hire shills, for instance?

Copied for clarity.

And as for Zionists having to hire shills outside of the Jewish community, well, why wouldn't they? All a decent shill needs is to be a master debater (heehee), decent grammar, and have a big enough paycheck to stop them from questioning the motives of their superiors.

Copied for clarity as well

"Zionists" don't need to hire shills to defend Israel because there is a huge number of people already doing it and believing what they say. Accusing someone defending Israel of being a shill is like accusing a religious person of being a shill for the Church, or an atheist of being a shill for anti-church groups.

Yes, it is definitely true that there are lots of Israelis defending Zionism without being hired to do so. But I'm not about to dismiss the idea that they are hiring people to shill 8 hours a day as a full-time job.

Oh, just realized that the guy I first responded to (/u/Shillout) is apparently dedicated to one-word replies of "Shill" to anyone who disagrees or does some minimal critical thinking.

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Deleted the wrong comment. Double post. See other post

And as for Zionists having to hire shills outside of the Jewish community, well, why wouldn't they? All a decent shill needs is to be a master debater (heehee), decent grammar, and have a big enough paycheck to stop them from questioning the motives of their superiors.

Thanks a ton, Redditor for 3 days, only talks about people being shills like some sort of novelty account.

defence is spelt with a c yankie doodle

TL;DR: The more they shill a thread, the more it matters.

Trolls and conspiratard posters (though; generally they coincide) make up the majority of what people consider 'shill' posts.

It's even mentioned when there are threads with hundreds of comments - people actually post that they're just here for entertainment & they get up voted for it.

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I don't disagree with that, but people fucking with us isn't shilling, it's just them trying to get a rise out of everyone.