Is The New User Or Poster On Your Forum Or Product Review Page A Troll Or A Genuine New Poster?

Is the simulated post below a real question from a genuine new user to a cycling forum or someone paid to post on as many forums as possible so that the name XYZ Cycling Power Meters comes up on web searches for power meters?

Is the simulated review below a real bad review from a genuine customer or just made up either for a laugh or with the intention of damaging the business being reviewed?

When reviews or posts are made by new or relatively new posters it is impossible for the reader to know if they are genuine or not because there is no poster history or identification.

The idea behind the Anti-Troll service is to create this history and identification across user names on different forums and product review sites and sections.

So you see a comment left in the feedback section of a business, see that it has an Anti-Troll code, look it up and see;

• That it's a new Anti-Troll account, so you might be suspicious, but they did go to the time and trouble of creating an account and getting a code, so you may want to give them some benefit of the doubt.
  
  
• That it's a well established Anti-Troll account, so they probably mean what they say as they have a valuable asset, the account in good standing and won't to throw that away just for a giggle.
  

At first glance this sounds like something that I don't want any part of, another Big Brother business collecting data to sell me advertising.

It's not, we actually ask for money to operate this service and have structured the data we collect in such a way that it has no sellable value, initially we are asking for donations but we don't rule out a subscription fee in the future if nobody donates.

I think that people are now more ready to pay for some services, especially when these services are offered at a Cup Of Coffee prices, than in the past as it has become clearer what the costs for free services actually are.

The post and review from above have been repeated below, but this time they start with an Anti-Troll code.

If the reader is vaguely interested in if the item is genuine or not he can follow the link and enter the Anti-Troll code. they will then get a summary of the account that issued the code and where it was intended to be used.


The expectation is that the first person who is going to reply will make this check before replying and in their message confirm that the code is correct or that it has been misused.

After a while sites may decide that it is best practice for new users to get a code if they want to be taken seriously. If you look one up, this is roughly what you will see

This is a bit of a chicken and the egg situation, if a site doesn't uses Anti-Troll codes then their presence won't be missed, if they do once users get used to seeing them their absence will be noticeable.

If you are leaving a real review, then attaching an Anti-Troll code associated with your account might stop a drunken or angry post, do I really mean this?

This is a new service and it offers only restricted benefits on day 1 with an empty database, but everything has to start somewhere.