Is CIA studying support for censorship on the internet?

There should be little or no doubt that large corporations, media companies, advertisers, political operatives and the CIA are studying how to manipulate people on the internet; and they often admit to at least some of it. The mainstream media often comes right out and says that Facebook and other internet companies are constantly collecting data and selling it to advertisers so they can learn how to target consumers more effectively; however the most thorough research about how they use this isn't available on the mass media.

That doesn't mean this is a fringe conspiracy theory, since there is an enormous amount of evidence to indicate that much more research studying social psychology and political manipulation, among other things in the academic world; and this isn't completely secret, although only a small fraction of the public reads this material. A couple of the most famous experiments, which everyone in the social psychology field of the academic world is familiar with, are the Obedience to Authority and Stanford Prison Experiments. However, the vast majority of the public isn't aware of this; and even many people in the academic world aren't aware of the full context behind these experiments, and that they were funded with the support of the military, if not directly by the military. As I explained in several articles listed below the military isn't in the business of teaching their recruits to question orders, and they're far more likely to support this research so that they can learn how to more effectively obtain blind obedience through boot camp indoctrination.

This research is only a small fraction of the research that he social psychology academic world is involved in, including another experiment done by Philip Zimbardo comparing how people react to an abandoned care in a wealthy community verses how they act in a ghetto; and another from a different researcher that made intentional wrong number phone calls so they could allegedly find out whether perceived liberal people are more prejudiced, than perceived conservative people, as reported in Arthur Miller's book, also listed below.

Additional research studies how people reacted when in an elevator while a boyfriend or husband is harassing his wife or girlfriend to see how they react; but this is also staged like the fake phone calls. this is portrayed as attempts to understand violence, which might make sense if they made better efforts to report the best and least controversial research to the public, like how early child abuse escalates to more violence later in life. These experiments have been replicated in a prime time show in a manner that could easily be used to shame people and to manipulate people, like the Obedience to Authority and Stanford Prison Experiments; however there is no effort to educate the public how this is often done anymore than they do much to inform the public about most advertising or political manipulation research.

Instead they often pass Proprietary information laws designed to keep a large portion of this secret, although they can't keep it all secret!

Some of these experiments are extremely flawed, as many people in the social psychology should know and they can often be used for multiple purposes, often to promote prejudicial ideas, which is why it is important to have good peer review, although what is published in the highest profile locations is often not the best quality work. For example the experiments to study reactions to the phony wrong number experiments were sited as evidence that conservatives are actually more inclined to help people than liberal's and perhaps less prejudiced, which I don't completely rule out; however another possibility is that some of the people answering these phony calls recognized them for what they were, fake, and responded accordingly, which means that conclusions from this experiment may be almost useless!

Many people within the academic community, including Michael Shermer, who I've cited on numerous occasions for doing biased research, cite these experiments and many more over and over again in locations that the majority of the public never hear of.

The clear implication is that there is a pattern of behavior within the social psychology academic community of doing one of these experiments after another. Some of these experiments are almost certainly studied by anyone within the academic world that thinks it can help them in their work, including advertisers, political pundits, union busters, military psychologists developing boot camp indoctrination methods, and as some good researchers including Alfred McCoy claim, the CIA.

The published research by many of these social psychologists doesn't fit the strictest definition of a conspiracy, since it's not secret; however people within the academic world have easy access to it; and some of them use it for manipulation or indoctrination purposes against those with less education, which accomplishes the same goal!

There should be little or not doubt that they will continue doing this research in the online community conducting social psychology research there as well, although most of the research on this is almost certainly not published where many people can see it, and since it is often years before some of this research gets circulated much, it's less likely that most of it is well known at all.

Once people become familiar with the work done by social psychology researchers in the academic world it shouldn't be hard to speculate about some of the kinds of research they would inevitably do on activity on the internet from studying sex offenders seeking teens to pray on, which the FBI occasionally says it's doing and often they report it on TV, to minor things like how people respond to ratings or likes, depending on which forum they on, which can be used for improved advertising tactics and many other things. One of the things they did in the Milgram obedience experiments is study how people would react if they had additional support versus if all people present were inclined to obey authority with many variations.

One of the simplest things to figure out, once people think about it, is that popular forums have to have a steady amount of traffic and participants in order to attract new members. When the internet was first established it might have been controlled at the grassroots, at least to some degree but there was a very small percentage of the public participating in it. By the time it became more popular there almost certainly were many people from the oligarchy, including advertiser political operatives, social psychologists, and the CIA that recognized this; and the successful forums that grew must have realized they needed a strong group of regular participants to get their forums off the ground.

This raises the question of how many people that are the most popular at any given forum are there for fun or because they have an undisclosed agenda.

There should be no doubt they would be inclined to research all these things and much more, although it would be virtually impossible to keep track of it.

There is also an enormous amount of evidence that many alternative media outlets are being run by organizations with major institutional support; so in a addition to the oligarchies controlling the six largest corporations controlling over 90% of the national media, they also have an enormous amount of influence on the alternative media outlets.

There's good reason to believe that in at least a few cases AstroTurf pressure or psychological manipulation have been used to encourage censorship for one reason or another; in some cases there is even incentive for people to suppress content they don't like through down votes or flagging material that they don't like, and moderators might use this as an excuse to support censorship instead of debating issues on their merits. In many cases this is often done by forums that claim to defend free speech; however they often seem to mean that it's only protected for the majority or those that control the forums.

I can't say for certain how much the CIA has been involved in; however there is good reason, after many past disclosures, to believe that at a minimum they're interested in studying it and almost certainly conducting other activities. This doesn't mean that all people involved in the CIA are informed about it or that there aren't other undisclosed agendas competing with each other, which there almost certainly is.

The fact that there's an enormous amount of psychological research going in in the academic world is definitely true, and there are reliable sources to prove this, and they even openly admit it, although they often spin it to their own favor. There's also enough evidence to indicate that there's an enormous amount of additional activity done in secret; so reasonable conspiracy theories are justified; however it is important to keep track of the sources and review how they came to their conclusions so that people know the most reliable conclusions are not mixed up with the most irrational conspiracy theories.

Even if there isn't adequate evidence to support many conspiracy theories there's little doubt that many of the most powerful organizations are controlled by a small fraction of the public with an enormous amount of the money; and that they also, either directly or indirectly control a significant portion of the alternative media as well. some of this is through financing it directly; but there's also a lot of it done by simply controlling the mass media which decides which subjects many people discuss at the grassroots level, even if they can't completely control people's views on that subject.

The following are a few of the most important of my past articles disclosing some of the psychological manipulation research, along with Arthur Miller's book, after a review of a few examples where there are ulterior motives that have been demonstrated in a few major web pages:

Philip Zimbardo, Lucifer Effect, Stanford Prison Experiment

Corruption or Bias in the American Psychological Association

Eli Roth’s Milgram/Obedience experiment much more extensive than most people realize

Anti-violence social experiments (including staged threats to a spouse in an elevator to study reactions) could be part of a slippery slope

Frank Luntz confesses to sabotaging democratic process for clients

Arthur Miller "The Social Psychology of Good and Evil 2005 excerpts

Arthur Miller "The Social Psychology of Good and Evil 2005 PDF



One of the most blatant examples of political manipulations from a pseudo-progressive webpage portrayed as grassroots that I've encountered is the Daily Kos, which for a while before 2012 I thought was one of the best alternative media outlets, although after I joined them and took a closer look I found out that it was heavily censored, and they had rules that encouraged this. It wasn't until I was banned from them for using what I considered free speech advocating for a grassroots candidate that I realized that the rules actually encouraged censorship and that while they pretended to support progressive ideas within the Democratic Party, they actually restricted the speech that would support Democracy or criticism of establishment Democrats, that are obviously not progressive at all.

After looking back I now realize that this censorship which I recognized back then continued and helped rig the 2016 election for Hillary even when she had little support from well informed real progressives.

The following is an article I originally posted on Open Salon (They have since closed down so I retrieved it through the wayback machine; for some links, which I didn't replace see the original which goes through the wayback machine for now) in 2012 about being banned from the Daily Kos for encouraging debates from diverse candidates including Jill Stein; at the time I thought this was supposed to be an open site that encouraged diverse progressive ideas, before finding out that it was designed to help rig coverage for establishment candidates:

Censored at Daily Kos which pretends its promoting democracy 10/05/2012

Yesterday I posted a blog about Censored at debates: Jill Stein, sincere candidates, issues; this was cross-posted at the Daily KO as Censorship partly prevented at debates: Jill Stein, Democracy Now! Present issues. 10/04/2012 When I attempted to sign in today to respond to the people at that blog many of whom were outraged by the fact that I wasn’t blindly supporting the Democratic Party I was forced to click on an acknowledgement of the fact that I was warned that advocating for a third party is against the rules at the Daily KO before being allowed to post again. I did this assuming that I would be allowed and that it would be a matter of time before I was banned because I wouldn’t put up with that and there was no doubt that I would be speaking out on the subject. It turns out that I couldn’t post anyway.

This is clearly a Democratic Propaganda machine disguised as a discussion board. There was no warning that this board was heavily censored and I couldn’t find where these rules were that informed me of what I could and couldn’t do. A relatively quick look around the internet turns up the Truth About the Daily Kos which is being run by someone that has had similar experiences with them and is presumably more familiar with them than I am.

Ironically while looking around a little further I found an article about Internet Censorship Bills Up For Vote Dec 5th – “Stop Online Piracy Act” & “Protect IP” Garner Enthusiastic Bi-Partisan Support In Congress at the Old Speak Journal which was also posted as Internet censorship bills appear to be fast-tracked for action by Joan McCarter at the Daily KO. The Old Speak Journal also posted about As Obama, Romney Hold First Debate, Behind The Secret GOP-Dem Effort To Shut Out Third Parties.

So which is it; are they against censorship or for it only when they’re the ones using it?

It clearly seems that some of the people involved are in favor of censorship when they’re the ones doing it; however there might be others that haven’t kept up with it or that have looked the other way and remained silent about it.

You can’t be sincerely opposed to censorship and use it at the same time although many people pretend to do this. Looking the other way isn’t much if any better although there may be more details that could result in mitigating circumstances.

Apparently the subject came up at the Democratic Underground which wasn’t censored, or was it? Welcome to the DUngeon what is going on here? Original article from wayback machine

Recently an article, Daily Kos Is Back The liberal site has acquired a new relevance in the era of Democratic resistance to President Donald Trump. By Ryan Grim 04/12/2017 claims that the Daily Kos has become liberal again in it's opposition to Donald Trump; however they describe how they refused to get behind Bernie Sanders in 2016 despite the support he had from their grassroots. Clearly, although they can take credit for opposing Trump now, they're still supporters of the traditional Democratic Party not the grassroots, and are only trying to collect brownie points. This is still an Astroturf web site!

Ryan Grim is usually about as good as traditional media, or Huffington Post, which is one of the few alternative media outlets invited to appear on traditional media outlets, gets; however he's clearly trying to patch together the reputation of an AstroTurf media outlet which also gets a lot of coverage from traditional media. The best alternative media outlets rarely get much if any coverage from mainstream media.

According to The Duplicitous Roles of the OFA and the Daily Kos 05/03/2015 Ryan Grim's claim that Markos Moulitsas and the Daily Kos leadership didn't take sides during the primary and they only received flack for inadequate support for Sanders even though the grassroots at the sight overwhelmingly supported him was blatantly false as early as May 3 2015, when they reported that Markos Moulitsas declared the Hillary Clinton was “inevitable,” and the grassroots was outraged! It was clear at that time that if they had addressed the grassroots support for Bernie Sanders that he would have had a much better chance.

Instead "the OFA’s 'rapid response' team turned out in full force on the Daily Kos, predictably shouting down detractors and unleashing faux outrage at any member who had the temerity to challenge Markos’ assertion." The Hillary Clinton campaign benefited from an enormous amount of support from obviously planted supporters from the establishment and the article even points out that Markos flipped on his support for Clinton after saying, in 2008, "She is a leader who fails to lead. She does not appear 'electable.'" Markos is clearly a political operative that sold out rigging the primaries for a candidates that he previously said she couldn't win, and as it turned out he was right!

This doesn't mean that the Daily Kos, alone rigged the primaries for Hillary Clinton, of course; however this was a patterns among the traditional media as well as the leading alternative media outlets which was replicated over and over again in other web pages, including The Democratic Underground, Huffington Post, and even Move On which eventually supported Sanders in the Primary but only after they were unable to overcome an enormous amount of grassroots support.

Many of the leading alternative media outlets actually got some support from the traditional media, though brief amounts of coverage from time to time, and alos often get some degree of financing, and aren't controlled by the grassroots at all! To some degree this may even include Democracy Now, although they did a much better job expanding the debate in both 2012, however they probably could have done more, and As I have reported in some previous articles they have occasionally provided puff pieces for authors like Philip Zimbardo and down played the support that USAID has been receiving from the CIA for decades.

The Daily Kos apparently relies on Daily Kos: Rules of the Road to justify their policies. They claim to be progressive, yet support candidates that are blatantly supporting non-progressive ideas and cater overwhelmingly to Wall Street. these rules aren't widely publisized and I didn't know I was violating them until after I was banned or as one person put it went "BOJO" which apparently means that I was flagged presumably for supporting debates where third party candidates can be heard and the voters can hear much more diverse ideas including progressive ideas, which the Daily Kos pretends to support.

These rules are very selectively enforced, since clearly there was an enormous amount of trolling on my article yet none of them were banned, and there should be little or no doubt that many of them almost certainly work for a political organization of some sort. The rules say that advocating for a third party candidate is banned based on the false assumption that the Democrats have been progressive, which means that actually advocating for progressive ideas is essentially banned. trolls who support the Democratic Party aren't banned and are apparently used to help ban people since they can "flag" things they don't like and this is part of the process to ban people. It isn't all clearly defined in the rules and people that are banned including me are often not sure why and don't even get a warning. After finding out a little about it I found a few diaries including New users are now taking 3 flags to BOJO. Still happening, 2015 and Welcome New Users: Ratings, mojo, nojo, bojo and mo' which shed a little more light on how it works but they aren't official policy.

Edit 10/25/207: After doing a relatively quick search for Daily Kos censorship I found many more people that have been banned from the Daily Kos for expressing their views. The Daily Kos is still not solely responsible for rigging the primaries for Hillary Clinton and chasing away real progressives, effectively rigging the general election for Trump; however they did far more to accomplish this than I previously realized. The evidence is mounting to indicate that this election was rigged!

The following a a handful of the censored contributors, including Ted Rall, who is a well known cartoonist from the Daily Kos; and there's many more some that can be found in the section they refer to as "Trolls," although the real trolls are the ones that chase off opposing views and as long as they support the corrupt Democratic establishment they're allowed to stay.

The end of Daily Kos as a credible news source 06/02/2016

Politically motivated censorship at DailyKos? 03/04/2016

Does DailyKos support censorship of #WhichHillary? 02/29/2016

Censored by Daily Kos Ted Rall 11/28/2013

I have been censored by Daily Kos Ted Rall 11/29/2013

Daily Kos Bans Cartoonist Ted Rall for Imaginary Racism 12/03/2013

Did Twitter's Exec Censor #WhichHillary in advance of Key Primaries? Twitter users speak out 02/26/2016

Markos Moulitsas Clinton-bashed well into 2008, but is now censoring Clinton critics after March 15th 03/05/2016

Daily Kos Censorship and Apartheid Israeli Style December 2015



The Daily Kos is a laughing stock and if Ryan Grim thinks they can come back after this he's not much better.

Apparently numerous other webpages including ImgFlip also have similar rules that allow users including trolls or people with undisclosed motives to help censor ideas that they don't like, although it is difficult to know for certain since they also don't seem to have clearly defined rules. I sent them an Email asking if they retract "featured" memes which are shown more prominently if they're voted down without getting many if any up-votes, but haven't received a response yet; however they clearly appear to be doing just that, especially for memes that question religious beliefs, and patriotic or political memes that question republicans seem to be retracted more often. When memes critical of religion get up votes they rarely get retracted, so far only ones with no up-votes or a few with only one up vote have been retracted, and those that are retracted often get negative comments that don't adequately address the meme that they criticize.



As I write this another meme saying “'In god we trust’ because he ‘works in mysterious ways’ with appeals to emotions all others must communicate openly and rationally, keeping their word, to earn trust!” was retracted, without explaining why; and many other ones are apparently approved by the administration then retracted after they don't get support from people that don't like it.

Religious people are often taught not to listen to people that challenge their beliefs from an early age so they often don't correct many incredibly obvious mistakes; however this doesn't mean that major forums attracting a lot of attention need to help them remain in denial. If their beliefs are true then they can correct mistakes from skeptics and they'll stand up to scrutiny; however the fact that so many feel the need to do so raises doubts about them.

Allowing memes or contributors to be censored by those that disagree with them is a way to enable forums to try to blame others for their censorship; however it is clear to anyone that thinks it through that the forum moderators are the ones making this possible and in some cases it's clear that they're enabling those with the most paid political operatives, which is almost always the same people controlling the oligarchies, to increase their control over the alternative media as well as the mainstream media.

If popular web pages are interested in defending free speech then enabling members of the public to help with the censorship of content that they don't like is hardly the way to do it; however it's a different story when they allow or encourage people to promote the ideas they agree with which is, of course the way it should work, and it's hard, if not impossible, to imagine any objection to that. ImgFlip doesn't have nearly as much traffic as the Daily Kos and both Facebook and Twitter are much more popular, and they have their own ways of setting up the programs which are often more difficult to sort through, although if you watch them enough there are plenty of people that claim they're biased one way or another. This of course now includes the mainstream media which is arguing that Facebook is selling ads to Russia propagandist, although even if there is some truth to this, it can't be nearly as bad as the obsession coverage the mainstream media gave to the most corrupt candidates that became the nominees enabling trump to get elected.

There is absolutely no way that either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump could have gotten the nomination without this enormous advantage if they had provided fair coverage to honest candidates from the grassroots, nor could most of the members of congress get elected!

But why did they rig the election so that these two incredibly bad candidates got an enormous amount of coverage that enabled them to get the nomination and, after making it appear as if they were rigging it for Clinton enabled Trump to win by putting him up against the only candidate he had a chance to beat?

Can't they do a better job pretending to do a good job defending democracy?

It's enough to make you believe in one conspiracy theory or another; but can you even trust the conspiracy theory message boards, once you start believing there is a conspiracy going on?

There are routinely even questions about that going back over a decade, even about the most common of those, Above Top Secret when someone asked in 2004 Is Above Top Secret website a CIA front? 2004- and Springer the ATS owner responded, "For the record, I can ASSURE anyone here that the CIA does not fund this site. The MWA has been known to invest in this site in the past and plans on continuing the practice as needed for security upgrades and other things." but it has come up again since then according to Is Abovetopsecret.com Run By Agents/Cia?? Something Shifty About That Site 2013 and several other articles the hacker group Anonymous exposed ATS as a CIA front however, not surprisingly, people from ATS in Who are Anonymous who is behind Anonymous, what is their Agenda? deny it and claim that Anonymous might be working for the CIA.

How can we tell which is which?

We might not be able to for sure without additional information, at least; however there might be some way to narrow it down depending on what the CIA is trying to accomplish, how and why.

As I have written in the past there is enough evidence raising doubts about the early development of civilization, including megaliths, well over a hundred tons some over seven hundred tons, that were moved long distances, by people that allegedly only had primitive tools, even though experiments to move megaliths above ten tons had to cheat and only had limited success. This leads me to believe that there might have been some influence from an unknown advanced intelligence, possibly ancient aliens, as I reported in previous articles including, Is Stanton Friedman working for the CIA to refute reverse engineering claims? Hurricane Apocalypse Coming With or Without Fringe Conspiracy Theory and Looming North Korea Nuclear Apocalypse Result of Incompetence? Or Staged?

Above Top Secret has been reporting on these alleged aliens for years, and there should be no doubt that if they're partly true, at a minimum, the CIA would be observing them and almost certainly having people sign up to present their own arguments. If possible there is no doubt that they would want to influence the moderators, and if they think they can they would try to arrange for some of them to work for them; or perhaps the rumors are correct and that they really are working for the CIA so they can disclose information when they want in the manner they want, often, when it suites their purposes in a manner that only the most credulous would believe or in a way that it seems like a crazy conspiracy theory so few would believe it.

Are all the media outlets controlled by major corporations or well financed people, often without full disclosure of what biases they might have? Can media outlets even start small at all?

There are some small ones that might provide full disclosure; however they're very rare and they have limited resources, often relying on the information they get from larger media outlets. Old Elm Tree tried that a few years back with a message board to provide more progressive views that weren't always as welcome at the Democratic Underground so they started their own message board with a server in someone's house working with a few friends with a very modest investment. But they still had to maintain it and wound up trying to collect a few hundred dollars here and there and eventually let it go. This web page was fairly up front with discussions about their own personal views, although they claimed to try to be neutral for the sake of the board, they weren't, of course. This is a claim that people should stop making since no one seems to be able to do it as Howard Zinn pointed out years ago, and he was far more neutral than the mainstream media outlets that demonstrated that when they claim to be neutral, they really mean they favor the views of those in power.

Recently I found one of the few other message boards or small blogoshere's without much if any financial backing, although something about it seemed like it might be suspicious after I took a closer look and apparently a few other people came to to the same conclusion for different reasons. I was asked by Autumn Cote if she could cross-post one of my articles on her web page which I had never heard of and said yes. When I had a little more time I took a look and found that she had unusual rules about requiring a certain amount of comments to other articles, which seemed odd. Recommending them is certainly reasonable but requiring them seemed authoritarian and likely to chase people away.

A quick search turned up a couple other complaints, although the first one doesn't seem rational after looking at the site according to Writer Beat — BEWARE!!! 08/11/2017 just a couple months ago he was asked to cross-post as well and he found an antisemitic article by Tom Purcell who seems to have written at least three other articles, but supposedly they were deleted. This led him to the conclusion that Autumn Cote was a neo-Nazi, although this article isn't typical of Writer Beat, which apparently has some Jewish authors as well as right wing authors, or Autumn Cote, implying he might have jumped to conclusions for one reason or another. Another article claims that Mark Wachtler, owner or editor of White Out Press may also be a white supremacist, citing several articles that seem to have more credibility; however his only connection to Writer's Beat seems to be that he did an interview introducing her to some people in 2014.

With a relatively quick look at Writer's beat and these claims of supporting neo-Nazis I can't completely rule out some leaning toward this but, I'm skeptical of it and there appears to be something else odd about it. Apparently this is about five years old and they started out offering $10 to top writers and a chance at connecting them with publishing companies, according to Does anyone know anything about Autumn Cote Writer Beat? It feels like a scam. Aug 2012 The publishing companies don't seem to be affiliated with Writer's Beat; perhaps it was an early attempt that didn't work out but she's persisted since then keeping her web Page going, yet there's no obvious revenue or scam, although she must be spending a lot of time and a modest amount of money to keep it going for one reason or another,

In her interview, WriterBeat.com - great Citizen Journalism website 11/13/2014 she says, "To be brutally honest, we’ll likely never be a success. I derive a lot of personal enjoyment from running the site, so if I never make a dollar, no big deal." the assumption that she won't make money out of it seems to be true, since there is no revenue by her own admission which is repeated on her web page; however it's hard to imagine this is something she does for fun since it is so systematic. She seems to be recruiting her writers and a large portion of them are leaving with complaints that she regularly features on articles titled, "The Beat Goes On," writing about enforcing of rules that most writers don't find out about until they join and often leave once they find out about them. This hardly seems like the way to run a web-page if the motive is to either enjoy herself and promote a free forum or eventually turn a profit assuming she can sell ads.

Apparently I'm not the only one that has doubts about the motives behind Write Beat including another newcomer, going by the name of "Flying Junior," who wrote, Has Writer Beat Been Infiltrated by the Russians or is Autumn’s Real Name Natalia? 10/1/2017 He closes his argument by asking, "Are you guys infiltrated by Russian trolls? What other possible explanation could there be?"

I'm not inclined to rush to believe they've been infiltrated by Russia anymore than I'm going to rush to believe Autumn cote is a neo-Nazi. As I've repeated several times, even if there is some truth to the stories about Russia manipulating the election they pale in comparison to the activities of the six oligarchies rigging the coverage for candidates they support and the AstroTurf organizations like the Daily Kos and ImgFlip helping ensure that the real grassroots don't have a reasonable opportunity to promote honest candidates that might actually serve the interests of the public instead of bending over backwards for multinational corporations like Bush, Obama, Clinton and now Trump, often pretending to be progressive or anti-establishment.

As for Juniors question about what other possible explanation could there be, as I said earlier it is virtually guaranteed that people within the social psychology community will continue conducting research experiments that can be used for one reason or another including psychological manipulation, although when they do these experiments they claim that it is to prevent violence or study obedience to authority to prevent the blind obedience of the Nazis.

This web page doesn't have the characteristics that I would expect if most people running it would get "lot of personal enjoyment from running the site," or if they might be trying to increase traffic so they could sell ads, which she claims she is open to, although I can't guarantee that she thinks otherwise. Nor does it seem like something the Russians would do since the web page simply doesn't have that much traffic, although it seem very active with lots of responses from participants. The articles often get as much as one comment for every four or five views, although it is more typical, after they've been up for a while to get one comment for every ten views, which strongly implies that the vast majority of people that are checking with Writer Beat are the participants.

However it does have characteristics of a social psychology experiments, including variations of the Obedience to Authority experiments or the experiments done in an elevator to see how people respond to potential domestic violence arguments, which are often organized by professors with the help of college students. It's been decades since they started the Obedience to Authority experiments and on at least one occasion Peter Singer, an academic who specializes in ethics, said they almost certainly wouldn't meet modern ethics guidelines; however despite this claim, and the death of Stanley Milgram over thirty years ago they've been continuing to do them repeatedly, as I pointed in an article in 2011, which was long after Peter Singer said they wouldn't meet ethical guidelines and at least a few other articles including experiments about violence in an elevator which was being faked happened since then, and some of these experiments have become more sophisticated.

On the first article I posted myself, after she cross posted the one she asked permission for the first comment from her was, "Please note, the second best way to draw more attention to your work is to comment on the work of others. I know this to be true because if you do, I'll do everything in my power to draw more attention to your articles. PS - There is a lot I can do and would like to do on your behalf." (Panic About School Shootings Won’t Help! P.S. They’re Going Down!) This was typical of comments she makes to many other newcomers and it wasn't long before my article rose to the top of the front page, like the one she cross-posted for me, which received an enormous amount of feedback for a newcomer.

Perhaps I was famous! Nah, it doesn't take long to realize that the way the web page is set up one recommendation sends anyone to the top of the page. However the second article I wrote after this was followed up by comments about following the rules, which I wasn't aware of, "Please note, it's against the rules to post partial articles whereby the reader has to click on a link to read the rest of the article." Vietnam Documentary Hits Hard While Downplaying The Worst! And a couple hours after this, perhaps she noticed that at the end of the article when I posted the link it included an explanation to why I provided it and a comment critical of the rule about "peculiar rules about minimum comments on other articles," which at the time I only learned about by reading a fair amount of warnings to other readers, including the first one on my previous article.

This has some similarities to the experiments on Obedience to Authority to see if people will question these arbitrary and perhaps often senseless rules. Some of these experiments had many variations including whether people were more likely to question authority if others were also questioning it versus if everyone else was going along with the program. This involved staging things with multiple people that pretended not to be involved in the experiment. As I said before in order to get started pretty much every successful forum has to have a core group of followers that keep the site busy, and if they had some contributors participating with the experiment that would do the trick and they could have them conduct variations as well to see how different people responded. They could also study how people manipulate the ratings system to promote their own page, which they have a rule against.

They could also study how people react to obviously hypocritical comments from someone that expects people to follow the rules on her own forum then openly says, "I started spamming people on LinkedIn until they banned my account. I then moved to Medium until they banned my account." after being asked "How is it that you find people willing to cross-post their work here?" The Beat Goes On XIX

There could also be research to study how people react to on line bickering and if they join in which there is plenty of in many web sites, including this one. Like the Daily Kos the rules are selectively enforced if they're enforced at all; as far as I can see unlike the Daily Kos instead of banning me without warning she just gave me warnings, although she ignored my comment about the HTML not enabling me to simply cut and paste the entire article without reinserting each individual link and picture.

It would be interesting to see how she responds if I cross-post this critique and comes out and confirms or denies, accurately or not my speculation if she simply ignores it like she did with Flying Junior; or if she uses her rules to justify banning me, even though she said on the interview with Mark Wachtler that "As of right now, we have over 4,000 (by now it will be much more than this) articles and I have no intention of deleting any of them. One day I should ask a lawyer who retains ownership of submitted articles as I honestly don’t know. I imagine articles on Writer Beat are part of the public realm." I don't know whether she checked with that lawyer but I have written about copyright in the past and, although I don't agree with the laws, any copyright belongs to the people that wrote them, yet at the bottom of each article it says "© 2017 WriterBeat. All right reserved," which would never hold up in court.

Also one of the most common complaint that people heading out make is that she doesn't provide links to the source like most people that cross-post with or without permission. I often do this myself under the fair use clause. I can't say for certain that this is what she's doing but regardless, there could still be some benefit for this site by experimenting with the most effective way to set up rules for a really diverse that is "owned and operated by a regular person just like you and me, not some partisan Political Action Committee," as Writer Beat claims to be although there should be full disclosure. At the Old Elm Tree there was some discussion about the founders and their motives and beliefs along with efforts to collect funds to keep it going, they were far more credible than this site but didn't manage to get those funds.

Introducing White Nationalist Mark Wachtler and the Opposition News Network 04/05/2015



This was partially cross-posted on both Writer Beat where Autum cote denied being part of a social psychology research project, without adressing any of the concerns or elaborating on her motives and Above Top Secret where the moderators are presumably to busy to respond but maintain their own denials, although reactions from both are mixed.

The following are some of the memes that were retracted by ImgFlip after being featured by the moderators; they're followed by some that were never featured; and since the majority of memes that were retracted were religious, I also included examples of religious memes that weren't retracted, mostly that got numerous up-votes which presumably made it more difficult for the down-votes to result in retractions. I'm not part of a clique on ImgFlip although I can't rule out the possibility that some people that agree with me might have taken notice and started up-voting to prevent them from being deleted or just because they liked them.

Retracted





















Never featured















Featured