If I was a government official and wanted to troll an entire country, I would set something like this up along with a script that behaved as follows: As soon as signatures for any petition came within 4% of threshold value I would automatically double the threshold.
Note that, in the case of the White House petitions, the higher threshold does not apply to already-existing petitions, only petitions created in the future. The White House is not trolling in the manner you suggest.
