[AnimalMuppet]

Scientology holds their non-newbie teachings as, essentially, trade secrets. You only get to see them after you pay a lot of money to "advance" in their ranks. Somebody - presumably a disgruntled insider - started publishing some of their texts on alt.scientology. Scientology tried to stop them by automated (or very rapid human) cancels, with forged "from" fields. Posts on the board got "visited by the cancel bunny". Then people calling themselves "rabbit hunters" tried to figure out who was the source(s) of the cancel messages.

But it got knarlier than that. Scientology's texts were copyrighted; they had police seize the servers of people who put copies of the texts online.

Wired had a good write-up: https://www.wired.com/1995/12/alt-scientology-war/

[andai]

If you think that's wild, wait til you hear what they did in meatspace!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snow_White

[fritztastic]

Great info.

That photo of their building, at first glance my immediate reaction was the assumption that it was a screenshot from Minecraft. Upon closer inspection, it really is a photograph. Kind of a good metaphor for Scientology itself, looks harmless then you really look and it's quite a stark reality- less "wacky" and more "wtf".

[clsec]

Yep, a real photo. Unfortunately, I participated in the making of that sign. It was made at a sign company in Oakland, CA that is owned and operated by Scientologists.

As a matter of fact, it was this sign that started my investigation into the goings on at said company and my discovery that the owner, sales manager, production manager and H.R. person were all full fledged Scientologists. Needless to say, I quit that job. But it wasn't over.. on my exit interview they grilled me on why I was quitting/what I thought of the company. Then they spent the next 2 years trying to serve me for stealing documents that I didn't steal.