Shills infest many things, it is very profitable, and really easy to get into shilling for cryptocurrency or politics. This post is going to look at some of the shilling done in the cryptocurrency world, which is facilitated by bitcointalk.org mainly(owned by Theymos, also the guy who censors everyone on /r/bitcoin).
Shills and what we already know!
We already know about Media Matters/ShareBlue/Correct The Record
The shilling on /r/politics on reddit got so bad that the left leaning/liberal moderators actually had to ban it, because it was making them look really bad and everyone could see the shilling for what it is. https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/7szc5h/announcement_shareblue_has_been_removed_from_the/
We also can briefly browse any famous brand/person's twitter/facebook/youtube and see massive amounts of shills responding to something to try and change the narrative. Trump's twitter is the most obvious one, as you can see them all talking to themselves in reply after reply and they get paid to do so. These people get paid to write scripts that continually reply to get top comments. On Twitter if you respond multiple times to yourself for example and you are first on a tweet response you can make tons of posts that all show up(there is no downvoting on twitter to hide abuse/shills).
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1079082188665171971
- realDonaldTrump
Cryptocurrency shills and how the Bitcoin Scam continues to go on
Bitcointalk.org is owned by theymos, who is also the owner of https://reddit.com/r/bitcoin. Him and his moderators closely control the information flow about bitcoin, which is the largest cryptocurrency subreddit next to the general purpose /r/cryptocurrency. The mods delete anything that exposes the fraud that is bitcoin, aka Blockstream and Bitcoin Core. Blockstream effectively took over control over all github access and made them benevolent dictators, and Bitcoin Core is the node/wallet software that 99% of node operators use centralizing control to them.
Bitcointalk.org is where a lot of the paid shills get their funds to do what they do. Though it isn't exactly visible on the site itself for the Blockstream shill threads(where they pay people to call bitcoin cash a scam and all other coins are altcoins). Basically the way it works is that people sign up to shill cryptocurrencies/gambling websites/ICOs/new coins/and other garbage scams. There are 802 pages of "Services" on bitcointalk forums and there is 40 results per page
There is also an AltCoin Marketplace which has tons of Signature Campaigns for shills. The shills who get selected for shilling Blockstream and Pro Bitcoin stuff are only selected after they have proven to be great shills on other campaigns on Bitcointalk.org forums. This is all done in a place called the Dragons Den which is invite only, and there are some other places where the pro Bitcoin Shills coordinate and pay people off.
This link right here will show you just page after page of just "Bounties" aka Paid Signature Campaign Shilling. This is where the shills get their start. The best shills are selected to shill for Blockstream/Bitcoin SV/Bitcoin Gold/Bitcoin Diamond and all the other fake forks that were done in order to discredit Bitcoin Cash. Theymos makes a lot of money from keeping bitcointalk.org going because there are ads on bitcointalk. Guess what those ads are??? Yup, mostly the ads that are placed on bitcointalk are the exact cryptocurrencies/crypto gambling websites that are ALSO paying people to shill the service/ICO/Crypto.
This video shows you a brief explanation of how blockstream profits massively from keeping the 1 MB block per 10 minutes in Bitcoin.
In Conclusion
How do I know all of this stuff? I have been around on bitcointalk forums for awhile, and admittedly did participate in some altcoin promotion stuff. Though I was not approached specifically by DragonsDen or another Blockstream related shill project, I do know that this is how it works. You have to build yourself up in the shill community to get onto the higher paying Signature Campaigns. At the end of the day that is all anyone is really trying to do is to make some easy cryptocurrency for making some copy and paste tweet, or upvoting and sharing an ICO yt video, spamming reddit with nonsense, etc. It is a profit driven thing.
Ever notice when you argue with any of the people shilling that they don't know anything? They don't care to know anything for the most part. Only some campaigns actively make you use talking points, most are just say "something positive about our ICO/Coin and we pay you per post". Others do require actual effort and thought, where only "quality responses/comments/tweets" will count for the payouts.
So that is how it all works. That is why people continually come into /r/btc and argue/shill/annoy everyone. It is all held up by the forums that Theymos built and it will continue to happen. They aren't going to stop because they get paid per post. The incentive is to get paid!!!!
Note: Pixabay image used, on their website they say they do NOT require attribution or linking to the original author, and that the picture can be freely used.