How prevalent are bots in astroturfing really?

I don't get it, why would they be messing with companies so much?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it's pretty fucking prevalent. I'm trusting my gut because so far my gut has been right about all this shit that's come out about the alt right that just sort of magically materialized harder than ever during the 2016 American election cycle.

It's suspicious enough that I think a metric fuck ton of bots were involved and still are involved. But like I said, that's just my gut speaking. But my gut hasn't been wrong most of the time.

Fuck knows. Corporate espoinage seems to be a big thing for these agencies. Crony capitalism etc.

Just imagine the scenario

This is about power for them. Money means power too within capitalism.

Also, if you look at the CIA, they fund their black ops through corporate espionage (as well as drug/human trafficking). This is properly happening within most agencies that have to keep off the books.

bump

Remember [[[[[[[pg]]]]]]]?
Find a back up of the pg threads at the time for all the proof you need op.

How realistic is it that the top comments on Facebook are shills? I mean, I always encounter the same pro-EU, pro-Macron, pro-Merkel bootlicking shit every fucking time when I check the comments. It's always the same guys too. How do they manage to post two seconds after the article was posted and then get the most likes everytime?

I've encountered a pro-Merkel top comment yesterday that was so fucking cringey and distorted from reality that people in response legitimately asked if that's satire - yet this is still the top comment.

I know what you mean by smearing. The people who shill on social media for the establishment are always the ones being unreasonably hostile. I kid you not, I had more constructive and open discussions with alt-righters than with these pro-establishment liberals, they resort immediately to personal insults. The good thing about being a communist is that you can counter the accusation of being a right-winger.

bumping

Being honest here, I encounter a lot more alt-lite style shitposts by 'people' with unbearably stupid and unreasonably hostile post histories usually when Trump is mentioned, which could perfectly be the work of some factory of pork-funded brainlets. This shit is getting out of hand.

Additionally, the persistence of their comments and opinions this late into Trump's self-demoralizing presidency don't make much sense so it's reasonable at this point to suspect that much of these people were paid and soulless shills all along.

i don't know but in greece it's a common phenomenon
major politicians were caught having fake accounts retweeting and liking their shit
all online newspapers have commenters spamming the same propaganda even if it has little or nothing to do with the articles above (they use real people)
at the same time they some delete posts for criticising
in youtube the nazi party uses bots to get all their videos trending