Groups are absolutely paid to keep this board specifically astroturfed.

Also there is a new IP filter that affects everyone, where every 60 minutes you have to do the asinine wait before posting. This was done to stop the ecker guy, except it does nothing because all of his IPs sit and age in the background. This is also ironic since all he's doing is what the groups you've noticed were doing, his framework is based on an Israeli model.