I'm having a hard time finding the link, but there was an article posted here on HN a while back (which the author deleted because of the underhanded nature of the endeavor) about a marketer whose ad campaign for getting a government initiative passed was failing even though they were using all the traditional methods.

Then they decided to spend ~$100 on buying fake reddit upvotes for their initiative and it received millions of views and ended up being highly successful.

It's interesting how far a little money and technological finesse can have such far reaching effects.