Were Paid --Or Unpaid -- Trolls Trying to Divide and Weaken Revolutionary Minds.com Before Its Launch?

[This was written in December 2017, after a raid, then republished in October 2018, because of now clear blocking of Minds posts on Facebook. Right at the end of the post, the text goes to tiny print. That font size is a Minds.com glitch, not me trying to be artistic.... ]

Okay. I'm going to say what many of us on Minds.com think, especially if we're still on Facebook too, urging our friends to make the jump. I say this in the full knowledge that I'm risking loud howls, hisses of "conspiracy theory" and the ritual simulated barfing.  There is a level of "totally obnoxious post" a gleefully deliberate failure of personal mental hygiene properly defended by Minds as free speech, and there is a type and timing of trolling that to many of us looks paid. What outfits would have the means, motive and know-how to attempt to undercut Minds, covering their tracks by using paid trolls? 

That's easy.  

Minds is one of the only places where the U.S. Right and U.S. Left are truly talking. We have discovered that, Left to Right, we hate child rapists and love the Earth's beauty. We realize that the "global corporate cabal" that the Left sees and the "tyrannical government" that the Right sees are in fact the two faces of "the global corporate cabal controlling our tyrannical government".  On Minds, where we agree to disagree, we, sometimes making common cause, can achieve a binocular vision that is dangerous to those bent on exploiting our people. Minds moreover is one of the only viable challengers to Facebook, a global monopoly headed by a multi-billionaire who wants to be US president. But was it Facebook? Some highly knowledgeable users say no.

the trolls working under the hill

As to whether trolls are ever paid to block a populist push, there is ample and recent proof that they are, shedding light on how it works. Consider the Hillary-Clinton-generated myth of the "Bernie Bros". Frothed up by the Clinton campaign to discredit her main competition, they were paid trolls. Yes this is relevant to Minds, showing that both political sides use this troll ploy....

Paid trolls are a part of the oligarchical scene. While to the Right, the Left is often a blur, there are crucial distinctions. Neoliberals accept global corporate control of government, vast government subsidy of corporations, endless war and the political corruption necessary to all three. The Progressive 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign was by contrast powered by people under 50, the two youngest generations of Democratic Party voters, rising against the iron control of the Neolibs. With the Independent vote, Sanders came so close to beating the Washington Establishment in the Democratic primaries that Hillary Clinton's campaign resorted to vote-shifting election fraud in the South, "vote counting irregularities" in the millions in California, and voter suppression throughout the nation, to say nothing of the bogus "superdelegates".  

Clinton also unleashed an army of online trolls.  During the 2016 primaries, online "bros" identifying themselves as Sanders supporters verbally assaulted elderly women Clinton supporters and Sanders' websites were flooded with porn. Hillary told the media that this was the work of the "Bernie Bros".  Glenn Greenwald, the investigative reporter who introduced Edward Snowden to the world and co-owns The Intercept, reported that that there was no evidence that the trolls and porn were from Sanders supporters.

"Bernie Bros" were in fact the brainchild of David Brock. Described by National Review as "a right wing assassin become left wing assassin", Brock as a Republican had lied in order to bring down Anita Hill and get Clearance Thomas on the U.S. Supreme Court. Then Brock switched sides to become a Democrat, offering the Clintons ways to impeach Clarence Thomas.  Lovely dude. Paid trolls are thus a routine part of the Washington racket on both sides of the aisle. 

Facebook meanwhile had initiated a crackdown on anyone opposed to the status quo. By 2017, the crackdown was hitting the Progressives. The crackdown began however in 2016 on Rightists. Minds in 2016 was on a rapid upward climb, although still in construction. Fleeing Facebook, people on the Right were drawn to the haven of Minds -- and welcomed..... 

did paid trolls, hidden in the flood from Facebook on the Right, attack Minds?

By 2017, Facebook was bringing heavy pressures on Progressives, as they had on Rightists.  Facebook levied temporary bans on individuals, slowed their blog writing to a crawl then eased the blog because it was "written too fast", and forced them to pass Captchas then facial recognition with every post,  while seeing to it that their posts no longer reached their friends and followers. Many Progressive communities were therefore gathering their feet under them, getting ready to move. Scouts were sent to Minds, which was by then in an advanced phase of construction, with millions of people checking it out. A Great Migration was underway....

round two 

With uncanny timing, Minds was suddenly hit a second time, this time by "a" malicious spammer.  The spam was scat porn. That was so adolescent that some Minds people reacted with sympathy. As one said of the troll, "He probably hasn't talked to another human being in months. Perhaps he just needs friends...." There was however a graduated annoyance then anger as over weeks "he" assumed numerous identities and "they" posted increasingly gross graphics, the kind of thing even normally steely people worked to "un-see", which clogged precisely those channels and groups where new people would go to check out Minds..Some Minds folk said that this was exercising the right to free speech. He or they were however using "speech" to prevent others from communicating and giving new people a false, wildly negative idea of Minds. The right not to have to listen to it is part of that. So the coders gave the users and groups better blocking tools. 

Who would find it useful to make Minds newsfeed seem like an online Hustler magazine run by Nazis with mommy issues? (Duh.) Would they be able to pay trolls? (Duh again.) Are there lowlifes who would take the money? (Duh, tres veces.) Facebook is a distinct possibility. But is Facebook the right answer? And back in 2017, why was Minds so slow to react? 

According to Sinbad the Sailor @RebelRadio,  Minds coders were not the ones who stopped the scatporn."Minds just patiently sat back and let them graphically shit all over their site for months. Fincally, a real hacker with the username @wetfurr showed up and started doxxing them. They stopped spamming scat to minds shortly after he doxxed @complainerz."

Who was that guy or  were those guys anyway?