Funded troll

Funded trolls are paid to change opinions in the Research Wiki or alter the way that the project works in ways that favour those who fund them. A propaganda glossary or list of controversial topics helps identify terms perhaps amenable to their influence.

The TorontoTroll project is an example of another kind of funded troll, who would probably want to change opinions here if it ever became important to their cause. See Troll Protocol for more detail on that.

A friendly troll may be a funded troll, but probably only if they are paid by the Green Party or Greenpeace or some animal rights or Great Ape Personhood or vegan group. And those have no money, so it's unlikely. Usually the friendly ones are volunteers like the house elf.

A pa-troll of many volunteer or expense-paid friendly trolls may be able to uncover funded trolls and track them, since they know all their tricks and methods. But this quickly turns into fights between factions, and the methods learned by friendlies may become used by fundies, and technological escalation may occur.

To con-troll these, a system of bets like a Consumerium Prediction Market may be required. Wishful thinking is that they are never required, and that no funded trolls will appear. This seems really unlikely if marketing starts to depend heavily on the Opinion Wiki here or other traits of Consumerium:Itself.

If such a prediction market is operating, funding trolls makes less sense than just betting. And bets can be seen, and provide useful signals and information about resistance to changes, while trolls make a living out of being hard to track and trace (like using many IP numbers moin moin!)