[ska]

Forget state level resources, plenty of distortion is created by corporations or other much smaller interests with relatively modest resources. I wouldn't' be at all surprised if this were the source of majority of manipulation in practice.

Assuming anything on social media is "untainted" is pretty naive, it seems.

[walterbell]

A non-trivial percentage of the Fortune 500 have worked with "grassroots" PR consultants. See Edward Walker's 2014 book, https://twitter.com/evoleadership/status/761959456624082944?...

[alistairSH]

Yep. I see it locally with shill groups acting at the behest of real estate developers.

[xxpor]

And then there's the other side of it, where people accuse people on the other side of being shills with 0 evidence. It's extremely common in NIMBY v YIMBY fights.

[ethbr0]

That's why accusing someone of shilling with is in extremely poor taste.

It's effectively impossible to prove (or refute), so why waste thought and text on it?