And to show it, he kills us all !!

This is an example of how these online "reputation defenders" and "new media strategy" outfits work.

If there's any news story that reflects badly on any of their clients, or on their own industry, they start with "First Post!" attacks to see if they can't bury the entire discussion. I've found myself on occasion seeing a story and being interested in the opinions of other readers, but when I see the first several threads are some kind of troll crap, like the one above, I'll just move along.

So, there's a good chance that the guy who wrote the above post works for one of these companies. He probably also has at least a dozen Slashdot accounts, all made in the past few months. But there's always the possibility that you're going to burn an account if you come on too strong with your troll, so you toss up a few anonymous posts, maybe containing a reference to some stupid 4chan meme so that people will just think, "Oh, that's just some idiot".

Then, if an engaged discussion still takes place despite the "First Post!" trolls, you can still bring out your sock-puppet Slashdot account and say something that almost looks authentic like, "Just because one of these reputation defender/new media strategy companies is shown to be involved in illegal or unethical behavior, we shouldn't paint the whole industry with a broad brush, because hey, someday there may be some disgruntled ex co-worker who would try to destroy your online image and you'll need to use one of the fine reputation defender/new media strategies companies to help you out".

Then he'll use another one of his sockpuppet accounts to agree and it's off to the races.

  These astroturf/paid trolls/paid shills are as big a danger to the internet as SOPA or ProtectIP is. I could easily seeing them become so prevalent that not a single opinion or review or assertion on the internet has any value at all. And clearly, they're not going to be satisfied with just disrupting online communities like Slashdot or Wikipedia or [name your favorite online community]. They're bringing out the malware, the seriously malicious methods of taking critical web content down. They are every bit as evil and as dangerous to the future of the Internet as repressive government action. Maybe even more because they wrap themselves in "free market", "everyone needs to make a buck" language.

We're going to have to figure out a way to thwart these creeps.

Nobody looks out for the internet, so it's vulnerable to all sorts of scams and malicious operators. Lots of money is involved. As always, it's going to have to be a community-driven solution, the same way the most effective anti-malware efforts have been community-driven.