Shill indicators and patterns:
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They have not submitted any or very little content to the forum, but are very active in comments. They do this because it is much harder to hide their non-supportive agenda in titles of posts, and they are not here to contribute. They are here to sow discord and doubt, disrupt, dampen morale, ect.
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Many of their comments will be "debunks", but they are not done in a respectful or supportive way. Their TONE is the biggest tell. They are not polite and are disruptive. There will be outright insults to subtle mockery. Also look for directives like "stop spreading bullshit", "don't be lazy", ect.
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Besides the insulting rhetoric, look for phrases like "you people", "the people here should", "you are all", "everyone needs to", ect. They do not see us as individuals, and judge us as a whole like a bigot. This bleeds into their commentary.
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They camp the new tab, so pay attention to the first few commenters on your posts. They do this to make sure other shills and their alternate accounts will upvote the disruptive comment to the top of the post. Many times they will comment to this first comment with another account, to attempt to legitimize the first comment. This is also a good way to forum slide, pushing legitimate comments further down the page.
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They attack sources instead of addressing the evidence and information. This is called the Genetic Fallacy. They also ask for sources just to use the fallacy to dismiss your comment. Learn this fallacy and call them out on it.
When you see subtle indicators go to their history and look for these patterns.
We should be diligent about spotting and deporting these types. They have changed their tactics since the initial purge of the more blatant shills.
Also see techniques for dilution, misdirection and control of a internet forum for more.
If they’re all like that absurd scumbag, your efforts are on the side of angels, fren. Although I’ll admit, I haven’t seen anybody else that bad.
But I did have have to laugh at how closely your bullet point list described me... and I ain’t no troll. I think the basis of your list is fairly astute, so I won’t quibble on any of the bullets, but I want to make an important point that as you do the (tragically under-appreciated around here) work of uncovering the willfully destructive and disingenuous presences on this board, intent is primary.
I’ve used some strong words with people here who I believed made it clear they were not truly interested in the truth, just like you used some very choice words on that fake “fren” earlier today. But these are fundamentally different from the hatefully abusive way that guy was treating this board and its members based on a clear distinction of intent - his obvious intent was to harm this board (confirmed because gratuitous abuse was simply all he had).
Here’s a great recent piece (shamefully tanked by The NY Times, so run by the NY post instead) on the importance of intent in making judgements. https://nypost.com/2021/02/11/read-the-column-the-new-york-times-didnt-want-you-read/
Anyways, cheers!