Online marketing is completely dominated by this type of activity. I tried to market through legitimate means only (paid ads, word of mouth, fair, legitimately-earned reviews and press coverage). A competitor showed up and exceeded our 1 year+ head start in two months with spammy tactics, including fake social media reviews.

It's impossible to win a competitive SEO game without a PBN for link manufacturing, a bunch of lackeys and bots posting on astroturfed accounts, and so forth. I learned that if I'm going to do another business that depends on traffic, there will be no option but to spam and turf aggressively.

Google's dirty secret is that it's been completely and thoroughly gamed for a long time now. People are just used to sorting through the crap.