I've joined three of them although have not participated in any of their PnD and have no plans to. Here are my thoughts.
1.
Beginnings
These groups started forming last week, so they are all new and one of them has the first pump coming up tomorrow. Members are joining at a rapid pace with all of them over 10,000 members give or take.
2.
Confusion
Because it's so new, there is a lot of confusion on how they work. People don't bother reading the rules of course. But basically it's this.
2a. They have a countdown timer and they tell people ahead of time which exchange will be targeted, and what the strategy is (ie..sell at 100%, sell at 60%, etc., pump and hold, etc.). When the timer hits zero, the highest level members get an alert signal telling them which coin is going to be pumped. At that time, they need to buy as fast as possible. A few more seconds go by, and another alert signal is sent out to the tier 2 group, so they are getting in at least 5 seconds later, and on down the line. The lowest level people get in at least 15-20 seconds after the highest level people. I tried using my affiliate link with several different emails of my own and it didn't work to add new members, so perhaps a varying IP is needed between signups. Some guys join and seem to instantly have 150+ invites.
3.
Membership
One of them is an affiliate type ponzi scheme. You must get others to join using an affiliate link, in order to get 'the signal' a few seconds earlier than everyone else about which coin is going to be pumped. 150 successful invites get you max alert time of 20 seconds before the lowest level. The different alert signal timing levels 0, 2, 3, 5, 10, 15, and 20 seconds. The higher the level, the earlier you get the signal. The other groups you have to pay in BTC or ETH a monthly fee.
4.
Blind leading the blind
Most people in the chats on these don't have a clue about investing. I don't consider myself an expert (just at look my effed u purchase of XVG as a screaming example). But they basically sound like a bunch of baby birds in the nest screaming for an easy handout. From their comments it's obviously they don't care about crypto itself, the actual projects, or anything else. Most don't even seem to research anything. They just join and wait for the signal. Of course, the admins of these PnD groups are new at this too so they are changing the rules slightly every couple of days to work out the kinks.
5.
Volume of PnD
Some groups are aiming for 3-5 PnD per week, while others are aiming for 1 solid per week.
6.
Wrecking the market
Right now, they are pretty ineffective as a group. Sure they can pump a coin a little here and there and coin falls back it's original price and keeps on going. But, as these groups grow to immense sizes, become more organized, and members figure out how to coordinate better, my gut feeling is this will eventually lead to wrecking the entire market. All it will take is one news story to be picked up by the national press about a mass shooting or murder tied to crypto losses from PnD schemes and it would probably lead to gov oversight really quick and then crytpo becomes much more like the stock market.
These are just my observations. I'm not claiming they are right or wrong. I like to share as people seem interested in my views and research (ok, a few people, maybe, lol) .