Honestly, many of us don't give a shit either way. We have normal lives and just want discuss conspiracies and current events in a mature way. All of this pettiness and internet drama is ruining it for everyone. Both sides are showing how lame they are and the extent to which they are trying to escape their own reality. The sheltered extremists on both sides are in a perpetual dick measuring contest.

We have normal lives and just want discuss conspiracies and current events in a mature way. All of this pettiness and internet drama is ruining it for everyone.

Well, then you're opposed to brigading, shilling, and bots.

Both sides

Both sides of what?

Every single thread gets stealth brigaded by people using alts. It has been happening since the beginning of the last election cycle. I am just frustrated with people just arguing over the sanctimony of a subreddit. Every thread is always "This is just t_d 2.0" or "The shills are out in full force today". All of the people that actually want to discuss conspiracies both left wing and right wing are slid into obscurity. The two sides I am talking about are the topminds crowd and t_d crowd.

Every thread is always "This is just t_d 2.0"

Probably 80% of the people saying "this is t_d 2.0" are shills trying to divide everyone.

or "The shills are out in full force today"

Well, are they right or are they wrong? If, in fact, the sub is being overrun by shills, then they're not wrong to point it out. Are you aware of how extensive the shilling is on reddit?

All of the people that actually want to discuss conspiracies both left wing and right wing are slid into obscurity.

Again, that's mostly shills trying to maintain the two party fakery.

I think both of those comments could be coming from shills. They might even be coming from the same people on different alts. I really just don't give a shit to be honest. I just ignore all of that stuff and try to find the little threads hidden in every post of people actually discussing conspiracy.

I just ignore all of that stuff and try to find the little threads hidden in every post of people actually discussing conspiracy.

Which is fine.

But some of us are really fighting an information war here, and the shills are real, ruthless, and relentless.

People get a little frustrated when they're getting keyboard-stalked by paid psychopaths every time they tell the truth.

I respect anyone for defending their positions and I wish you the best of luck. I just hope that you don't end up regretting the amount of time, energy, and effort that you put into fighting an ideological war on an internet subreddit.

Tell me about it....

Very good point

I think the claims of shills, bots, and brigades happen 10000x actual shill, bots and brigades.

Can we just ban the brigades?

anyone confirmed sockpuppet is out?

can we have a 'trusted' inner circle?

trust no one

lol i'd love to see this sub try that, popcorn time

wouldn't one be able to do it just by establishing IP of persistent shills?

If it's a static ip. Why would some evil shill cabal use static, non-spoofed ips?

He should pay me whyle it's still good—

Do you think mods have access to your IP? They don't. Literally anyone, including you, can become a moderator.

I think anyone who supports a billionaire for president but calls themselves a conspiracy theorist has some major cognitive dissonance going on.

I've been a member of this sub for years. I've been on reddit for years. All the sudden people love the president? I never voted for Obama and yet I'm a "shill" because I don't support the monster in the White House. I cast my vote for Bernie in the primary and was extremely angry at the whole DNC situation. Did that push me over to pussy grabber? Hell no. There is nobody who can convince me that some aging has-been woman is worse than him.

Maybe Trump can give us one gift - the gift of government reformation. But if he decides to pull some unconstitutional shit like postponing elections or disallowing freedom of speech, that's on all you Trump supporters.

Ehhh, I feel like if anyone is gonna stand up to the deep state or illuminati or whoever the hell it is it would have to be someone who already has some power. Surely a random bloke working their way up would be a lot more suspicious and more likely to be another puppet. The fact that Trump seems to be so hated by the groups we've theorised about for so long I'm gonna give him a chance.

I would have more respect for him if he disavowed Putin, who has a hard on for human rights violations. I'm more disgusted by his inability to criticize Putin than I am by the thought that he may have colluded with Russia.

I live in a Russian community and many of them are here because they fled Putin and his cronies. It's unimaginable over there but our president appears to encourage his followers to look at it through rose-colored glasses. People need to be more disgusted. Say what you want about Bill Browder, but he speaks the truth about Putin

I missed that, but I'll check it out. I try to be as informed as possible about all sides. Nobody is 100% right. Kind of funny to me, because I took a lot of flak as a liberal person for being opposed to making the Democratic party about identity politics 5+ years ago. Now I get lumped into that no matter what. (I do agree with some of it now). But I digress.

I don't trust anything that comes out of his mouth. You don't get into and stay in power like Putin without being a master manipulator. While in the US we have some freedoms/illusions of freedom, much of that is limited in Russia.

I have had the opportunity to become acquainted with a lot of Russian people before Donald Trump ever announced he was running for the presidency, so these individuals would not have had a bias against what hadn't yet happened. We never talked much about it because I imagine some of it was painful to talk about, but I do remember one story of a family whose relative had a KGB/FSB operative walk up to their door and shoot the father in the face. Was never investigated. They left after that. Another told me that there was almost never food on the shelves in their local grocery stores and local kids often went hungry, even though many of the powerful people lived in total opulence on their tax dollars. Their news is totally state-controlled and a lot of people are secretly opposed to the government for fear of retribution. Many Russian immigrants I know immigrated here just like a person from Mexico would - in desperation, with no money, not knowing English. Many of them miss their homeland but fear returning because of the people in power.

The media will try to make us believe whatever their agenda is. The best thing you can do is get acquainted with actual people involved, not talking heads. And I'm sure there are a lot of people in Russia who've never had to deal with bad situations like I've described. But it's far from a free country, and that's why a lot of them have come to America. People who passionately love their home country typically don't leave it for good without a good reason, except maybe a really great job offer or something of that nature.

Just try to keep an open mind.

I actually upvoted you, but you're hardly being downvoted into oblivion you're on -1 lmao. I imagine you'll get downvoted much more now for putting that ridiculous edit up

Was +10 about an hour ago; that's what I'm referring to. I'm controversial on RES

Ah right I see

You also have to understand where you live may be slanting your view. You live in a community of people who fled "him," so obviously they're not going to have anything good to say. If it's true that you live in a heavily Russian populated area, and that they all fled out of fear of Putin, maybe you're not getting the whole picture.

Also, I would find it laughable if it weren't so sad, that you accuse a foreign leader of openly doing what ours do in secret.

Hating one corrupt leader doesn't mean I can't hate another equally. But frankly, I don't believe Donald Trump has people killed. So at least he has that going for him!

What whole picture do you think I'm not getting? Do you have any first had experience with this issue beyond what Breitbart tells you?

Do you believe Hillary has ever had anyone killed?

After the USSR broke up the NATO told Russia they wouldn't start pushing eastward. The west told Russia to open it's business to our central banks. Since then NATO has moved bases, troops, and missiles literally to Russia's doorstep and our central banks gutted Russian owned businesses.

So Russia started spending on actual defensive capabilities, as opposed to western offensive capabilities, and kicked out most of the bankers. This was all Putin's doing. He saw that west was trying to make Russia into a mirror image of itself and Putin wanted to keep Russia Russia.

The west didn't like that at all because a country was actually standing up to them so, they started spreading propaganda, recruiting more double agents, and creating soviet-esque histeria.

Is Putin a good guy? Hell no, he's a ruthless ex-KGB officer who has quite obviously had his detractors executed in the streets. But he's a Russian and he's fighting for Russia, quite a few Russians understand and appreciate that.

It's like here in the States. Is Trump a good guy? Not by many, many accounts. He stiffs contractors, he hires illegal immigrants, he bribes officials, and has more than likely worked with the mafia. But, a lot of people see him as an American fighting for America right now so they're willing to overlook those things.

beyond what Breitbart tells you

I don't read Breitbart, I study history and societies but thanks for playing.

I am in agreement with you, except that I absolutely don't see Trump as fighting for anything other than his right to more money. Thank you for the explanation!

Why do you not see him as anything else? He is trying to secure our borders, business is coming back, jobs numbers are the best they've been in decades, he denied Tillerson's request for Exxon to get around sanctions, he pulled out of TPP and the Paris agreement, human traffickers are quietly being rounded up on an unprecedented scale, he's making other nations start to pay for their own defense, he's a billionaire (as far as we know) who gave up an unbelievably cushy lifestyle to be belittled and slandered on a daily basis, he's supported civil rights for decades...

He is not all evil, he really does love this country. I don't understand how people can ignore the good he's done just so they can be a bigger Trump hater than the next guy.

He's the president of the United States, he was elected by half of those who voted. Why can people not accept that, support the office of the president and in doing so our nation, and try to come up with a winning platform for the next election?

The DNC has zero serious platform, they're in shambles. But instead of regrouping, assessing, and coming back with a better gameplan, they try to convince everyone that if it weren't for muh Russians showing us all how corrupt she was, Hillary would have won. The whole notion is ridiculous and belittling if the campaign that Trump ran.

But nobody wants to have real, honest, open discussion. They'd rather call cheeto Drumpf's supporters a bunch of nazis or racist, sexist, bigots. Real productive...

For what it's worth, I don't call Trump any of those stupid names. And you wouldn't have seen anyone more pissed at the DNC than I was when the leaks came out. I've ALWAYS been suspicious of establishment politicians.

My opinion is that any good Trump has done has been overshadowed by his divisiveness and complete demonizing of liberals. Having lived in a border state, I'm happy that the border patrol is getting more money - I want them to get the chance to learn Spanish and communicate with the people coming across the border instead of just shooting them. Instead, Trump had to go and call Mexicans rapists. Kick them while they are down.

My husband was in the military when DADT was repealed. We all celebrated. Gay kids felt comfortable coming out. Suicide rates amongst vets has always been a problem. Now, not only do trans military personnel feel attacked, but anyone who supports them feels like they have no place in the military. What's worse is that the military was finally coming around about the whole gay thing and supporting its service members. Now? Anyone who isn't straight is a faggot according to them. His transgender policy has set us back 20 years. Watch more kids kill themselves. That blood is on his hands.

He's hired Scott Pruitt to dismantle the EPA while Alaska Native villages are melting into the ocean and displacing hundreds of people thanks to climate change.

He's hired Betsy Devos, who believes children down to the age of 12 should be able to leave school to go to work.

And he's done it all while blaming anyone who doesn't agree with him. Somehow, every Republican president before him has been able to do things to advance their own agenda without giving their supporters reasons to murder the opposition.

I can't ever support a president who openly encourages division amongst our country.

The OP was about contest mode and brigading, why did you immediately turn it into criticizing a political candidate?

...brigading by groups affiliated with political beliefs. How is that confusing to you?

Brigading, contest mode, and what should be done about it. How is that confusing to you?

What's even more interesting, is that it looks almost like the brigade only voted for original comments and one or two replies down. After that, the people calling out the bull shit start having higher, more organic looking upvotes (with the controversial comments being responded to still having 20+ more points).

Isn't this how voting usually works here? People don't dig down too much. I guess my question is, what does organic voting look like to you?

People here do actually tend do dig pretty far. At least from my observations. I certainly do.

Contest mode is great, and anybody opposed to it should be under suspicion of shillery.

How so? I didn't like the idea at first, but all the threads that got pushed into contest mode had much better comment sections than usual.

I did. What was the last contest mode? The last one I was involved with was the Mueller grand jury announcement, and I thought the comment section was much better than usual based on my own experience. I mean, I actually had a discussion about it, and I didn't end up with 30 instant downvotes or 5 random users attacking my comments simultaneously.

To me, the usual around here is a lot of Trump supporters slinging shit at the board and hoping it sticks, and generally downvoting / upvoting Trump stuff as appropriate. SB or TMoR dont maintain a constant presence, but they come in every once in a while to push some bullshit straight to the top, and absolutely annihilate the top threads in the comment sections with bots and random accounts attacking anything against the narrative.

I still don't think I understand your objection to contest mode. What do you think is harmful about randomized sorting and vote obfuscation? I don't give a shit about internet points, I just want to talk to people, and I don't want brigades pushing the narrative to the top every time. I know that there is something fucked with this sub when the top comment thread on every major post is almost always some rando shitting on the conspiracy and getting major upvotes while genuine users are downvoted to oblivion and swarmed. I've talked to quite a few long time users who I trust and even some mods about this, and we mostly have the same experience.

In the OP you say that going back over the comments now tells a very different story, I think that's the problem. It's like when MSM makes a bogus claim to rile people up and only later do they post a tiny retraction, the damage has been done. We will go back and feel vindicated but, at the time they are trying to distract it's working.

It's a complicated situation because even in contest mode, any real outsider looking in will see ridiculous comments with a host of accounts agreeing. I still think contest mode is better though, it at least gives the non-shilled comments a chance to be seen at the top. Otherwise it's the shills winning out.

Either way, we all have to speak up and vote. Especially in threads we suspect are blatantly narrative pushing.

Apparently not to the "totally normal users." Lol

I support using totesmessenger bot and going to contest automatically when a thread is X-posted.

Totesmessengerbot alerts the thread when it has been X-posted. /u/flytape explained to me that we shadowbanned it because the mods don't want us using the link to brigade other subs when we are X-posted. I can respect that.

On the other hand, I think the bot would be a really useful tool if, when X-posted, we automatically go to contest mode.

when X-posted, we automatically go to contest mode.

Sounds good on paper, but once the fact was established TMOR would literally link to every single post just to make us 100% contest mode.

You have to be careful what you do automatically because trolls will reverse engineer it and use it against you.

Wouldn't that just prove their brigading, though? Surely, if all the users could see when we are X-posted and have screenshot documentation, surely that would be compelling to the admins as far as brigading. We could even make a new rule: the moment a post is X-posted it will go to contest mode.

that would allow them to contest mode our posts any time they want without having to actually do the work of brigading.

It's a tough position to be in. Something needs to be done, but contest mode doesn't stop the brigading. I personally think it's the better option because, IMO it allows the brigaded voices to be heard. But like I said, I understand it's a bandaid for a bullet.

This is hilarious.

I think any pro government and pro presidential comments should be frowned upon. I'm not here to find out what good things the government and president do. I'm here for the corrupt shit they do. These people are screwing us everyway they can.

...brigading by groups affiliated with political beliefs. How is that confusing to you?

Very good point

Why do you not see him as anything else? He is trying to secure our borders, business is coming back, jobs numbers are the best they've been in decades, he denied Tillerson's request for Exxon to get around sanctions, he pulled out of TPP and the Paris agreement, human traffickers are quietly being rounded up on an unprecedented scale, he's making other nations start to pay for their own defense, he's a billionaire (as far as we know) who gave up an unbelievably cushy lifestyle to be belittled and slandered on a daily basis, he's supported civil rights for decades...

He is not all evil, he really does love this country. I don't understand how people can ignore the good he's done just so they can be a bigger Trump hater than the next guy.

He's the president of the United States, he was elected by half of those who voted. Why can people not accept that, support the office of the president and in doing so our nation, and try to come up with a winning platform for the next election?

The DNC has zero serious platform, they're in shambles. But instead of regrouping, assessing, and coming back with a better gameplan, they try to convince everyone that if it weren't for muh Russians showing us all how corrupt she was, Hillary would have won. The whole notion is ridiculous and belittling if the campaign that Trump ran.

But nobody wants to have real, honest, open discussion. They'd rather call cheeto Drumpf's supporters a bunch of nazis or racist, sexist, bigots. Real productive...