One way I attempt to make connections between accounts across multiple sites is to search usernames and then the corresponding passwords in publicly available databases. This article explains the Anti Public Collections https://www.zdnet.com/article/security-firm-identifies-hacker-behind-collection-1-leak-as-collection-2-5-become-public/.

However, there are many other similar databases that you can download and combine to start your own private intelligence database. You can write scripts to search the combined databases that reveal email addresses, passwords, vital statistics, security question answers, etc. A lot comes from phishing people, some is hacked from sites with poor security but there are a million ways to get all of this information. You are in these collections; every password you've used, IP addresses and, in many cases, even your credit card numbers.

I like the Anti Public Collections because if I uncover data, anyone can independently verify the information, themselves. So, if I tell you someone with a Rothschild email account has a password "tomatotable" you don't have to take my word for it. You can check for yourself. "Mike Rothschild" search reveals this type of information and more:

[email protected]:315216090734075

Here is one example that was deleted by @srayzie I was attempting to find the origin of the @IamQ account.

https://voat.co/v/GreatAwakening/3130351

There is a large batch of "IamQ" email addresses with very, very similar passwords that are long random strings; a sure sign of a shill farm in that someone seemingly made an organized spreadsheet and made 100 or more IamQ email addresses around the time of that the @IamQ account was created on Voat. This was the first time I entertained the idea that Q wasn't just a LARP, it was an organized campaign. But, I like a truth movement. I don't hate Q or the followers, but I've obviously had my own doubts as the tripcode was obviously exposed as being used by Pamphlet Anon. So, I'm not out to get Q. It really wasn't a concern, for me.

The trouble, for me, started happening when I started getting messages where people were associating me with Q. I was kind of forced to take a stance since my research overlaps, in great part, with the Q movement and the Pizzagate movement. This is when I started getting a lot of hate.

We already know that upvotes.club sells manipulation on Voat. Their domain is banned, but you can find it easy enough.

Voat Upvote

Only buy upvotes/downvotes for posts done with our accounts! This means you must also have bought a Voat Post in order to use this.

Voat is a Reddit clone without the censorship and heavy moderating. Reaching the front page is much easier here and we do it on a daily basis. Traffic is also more “long-term” (fewer posts to knock down the old ones).

$1.00

So, we already know we are looking for a group of downvote and upvote brigaders. These people are probably hiding in plain sight and would be easily identified if voting was made public at the time a thread was archived. Another way to circumvent the shills would be to implement code that undid vote brigading after an account hit another account 5 or 10 times and stopped counting votes but did not reveal that to the voter. If this list was also made public at the time a thread was archived, then you would know exactly who the manipulators were.

Obviously, @srayzie and the alt accounts are vote brigaders and are involved in /v/Pizzagate and /v/GreatAwakening. This makes that group an obvious suspect. In fact, that group of accounts that fervently defend each other (@Crensch, @Vindicator, @MolochHunter, etc) operate exactly as upvotes.club describes. This group is heavy handed with insults and outrage and has falsely identified people as shills. They make false accusations then treat them as a certainty, which aroused suspicion in a great deal of Voaters. It is also a good cover to have a veneer of shill hunting so that everyone thinks you are against shills.

Additionally, shill farms can cost other shill farms business and compete against each other. As far as I can tell, they are completely unapologetic about their behavior and completely unwilling to admit any wrongdoing. In fact, they have repeatedly doubled down on the behavior which is clearly shill behavior. Now, you can decide whether or not you think they are actual shills, but their behavior makes the question irrelevant to Voat since the behavior is the problem. Many people would like to know the answer to the question and they have clearly raised a great deal of ire. To me, if they are paid or are manipulated into the behavior by someone who is paid, then they are still a very serious problem, to me. Fake accusations are a huge problem and have legal consequences. The circle jerk of insults isn't productive and they know that but do it, anyways.

Another group is led/incited by @zyklon_b. This would be another obvious group to observe because their behavior lines up with brigading utilized by upvotes.club.

There are some people who make alts and brigade, but they aren't necessarily paid shills. In fact, if you were attacked by either of these groups, the logical way to fight back would be to fight fire with fire, creating a "vicious cycle." But, we don't have to do that for a number of reasons.

First, I tested the waters by seeing if I could max out my downvote brigaders (everything I do gets downvoted fairly quick.) After about 150 posts, they seem to run out of CCP. This confirms they are using accounts with fairly good numbers. Additionally, I tested different times of day and the delay between the submissions and the downvoting. Certain times of day it can take awhile for the brigaders to catch up with me, so it would seem not to be automated. This explains the high pricing.

I tested a way to auto down vote by using a mouse robot. It is fairly easy to do and it would be easy to randomize the timing. This manner would be exceedingly difficult to identify as "not human."

Unless I have confirmed a pedophile (people who have naked pictures of children), I don't usually go logging in to random accounts. But, literally, everyone's passwords are available. Your information is available; up to January 2019 for most stuff. When I do confirm a pedophile, I report the doxx to police and media. Point being, I am not really a shill hunter. They just haven't been a priority for me until they started attacking me in a variety of ways across multiple platforms.

At one point, I posted an article to my site, then shared the link on /v/Pizzagate. I had not shared this link anywhere else. I immediately had a few interesting visitors. One was from a subnet inside of CACI, a defense contractor. QinetiQ shares a business complex at this location. The two companies and more work together on "Integrated Projects" like "Operation Earnest Voice."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice

Operation Earnest Voice is an astroturfing campaign by the US government. The aim of the initiative is to use sockpuppets to spread pro-American propaganda on social networking sites based outside of the US.

Mattis broke up the operation and compartmentalized it across each military branch. In this case, I believe QinetiQ and CACI to be working together on an Integrated Project with Air Force IT that is specifically an Earnest Voice project where their sockpuppets are here, at Voat. In fact, I am confident that someone was browsing /v/Pizzagate, came to my site and then attempted to probe it in a very amateurish manner and that the password on their QinetiQ email account was "Goatblower."

This means upvotes.club and Earnest Voice are here. Factually. Are they competing with each other? If they are charging a dollar an upvote, then there is definitely money to be made. Keep in mind, high vote participation for genuine users hurts shills. You should reflect on which posts are making it to the top and what the agenda behind them might be. Some have called the Q movement a "Trust Operation" which closely reflects the Earnest Voice agenda. Constant race baiting also seems to be a plausible tactic of shills to keep "normies" away.

The Heaven's Gate cult operated a similar shill farm in the early days of the Internet. Scientology is also operating shill farms. Mormons have their own shill farms, as well. Beyond that, corporations tend to hire PR firms which specialize in serving multiple agendas.

Ultimately, Voat is small potatoes. My guess is that shills would like to see it operated as a "containment board" where truth about high level corruption is designed to stay within this ecosystem. My main criticism of /v/Pizzagate is that there is no coordinated effort to get the information out of the echo chamber and into liberally biased communities. The NXIVM branding video should be front page news everywhere but "normies" are barely aware of what NXIVM really is or what the extent of their operations were. Email campaigns using news outlets email addresses would also be a huge boost to the visibility of Pizzagate. The news is out of moves to maneuver around it. If there was a resurgence, then it would be really beneficial to society.

In the Anti Public Collections, there are email addresses to every news outlet. https://pastebin.com/pmH6djn0 Imagine if they were sent Pizzagate news all day every day the way the shills downvote my submissions.

Imagine if you could get the attention of good people within law enforcement and military and sent them evidence they could act on. https://voat.co/v/thewebofslime/3249570

tl;dr There are shills on Voat. They would be easy to neuter if public voting (after thread archives) was implemented and or code to undo vote brigading There is no point in hunting shills because they will always be around. The smart move is to take steps to neuter their ability to manipulate.