A month ago, you could tell that the shills had not arrived yet, at least not very many of them. You could post how much you thought the US government was corrupt, and how obvious blatant false flags were, and you would get dozens of upvotes and not a single downvote. You could talk about how GMOs are not 100% safe and how vaccines need to be given independent studies to verify their safety. No downvotes, lots of people agreeing with you.
But in the last few days, I've been seeing a lot more downvotes overall, and a lot more stifling of dissent. Sure, the general opinion is still "fuck the US government", but now instead of a post like that having +30 -0, it's now +30 -10. And those downvotes will surely only grow larger in the coming months.
They're here. And they're trying to manipulate public opinion here just like they did on Reddit. Be prepared.
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RedLeader ago
What are some tips for identifying shills, and what can I do about it when I find them?
Taka ago
The best way is to simply look through their comment history.
If it seems like they post about a particular thing a lot, they might be a shill. Especially if it's the sort of thing that the powers that be want to be pushed into the public opinion.
For example, look at someone like /u/adamwho on Reddit, who posts about NOTHING but how great GMOs are around the clock. Obvious shill is obvious.
origin206 ago
Or the mod for /v/criticalthinking who does the exact same thing concerning GMOs plus vaccines. His history is saturated with it. He also mods /v/medicine unsurprisingly. The first thing they did when Voat came along was take all the good subs and sit on them until more people arrived.
RedLeader ago
Good point. I looked at my own comment history. I have a serious bias against SRS apparently. My defense is that I believe they are the source of most of the SJW controversy on Reddit, and I'm still kinda new to Voat. I don't think this is anything the powers that be want me to be pushing though, just being transparent.