Also the large amount of bots creating fake accounts on forums (my experience is with Discourse) with profiles and spam posts to SEO boost some site indicate a whole shady background business going here.
Yeah, reminds me of anecdotes from the Dan Lyons book [0] about Hubspot. There was the shiny fun stuff happening "front of house", but back in the boiler-room it was ugly. And everyone gets shown only what they need to see to make them feel happy/sign/pay, and nothing else.
No-one actually wants to know how the sausage is made.
No-one actually wants to know how the sausage is made.
[0] - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26030703-disrupted