The simple fact of the matter is that a site like dailypaul takes $$ to operate. Over the last few months, when I've been there, an average of about 300 users on there at any given time. Ads don't bring in nearly as much as what people might think. I would guess the bulk of his income came from subscriptions, which have been apparently decreasing each month.
He's been fairly open about wanting to rebrand the site, even asking some of the users what they would like it to be. The RP graphic at the top of the site, about a month ago he started fading it, but got a lot of backlash from the users, because the RNC hadn't happened yet.
I have been watching it get 'taken over' by several groups over the last 3-6 months. There are a persistent few who make GJ posts to the point where it was an automatic -50 within an hour of being posted. Then they began to disguise their posts/thread titles so that people would read a bit until they saw it was pushing GJ, then those would get downvoted. These people are opportunistic, and wish to recruit passionate folks on the dailypaul to go do their work for them.
The L4RP and their 'satellites' have worked the board pretty hard, too. Whenever someone would respond to them by posting the various business ventures this group operates, the poster and relevant information would vanish into the 403 hole.
The fear porn peddlers have settled in at dailypaul. I have heard from others that this is typically what happened after the last election cycle. This is by far the most profitable niche, and what I expect will become of the dailypaul.
What you see over there is a terraforming process - those who partake in this business have it down to a science, and what they want, they usually get- eventually. If they can't have dailypaul, they will suck its userbase dry and kill the site.
I suspect you have just stumbled into the path of these pros, and had a rude awakening. Welcome to the wild West.
