There are services that sell upvotes - such as [1]. Presumably while also maintaining a large enough set of plausible-looking profiles, IP addresses, browser fingerprints etc to bypass upvote ring detection.

So you don't have to pay high-profile influencers, who might be expensive or give away that it's a paid campaign.

A marketing company comes up with an adequate post, posts it on one site and gets it upvoted, and with a bit of luck there you have it, it gets reposted onto other sites and maybe even ends up in conventional media.

I strongly suspect the "we get it, you vape" meme was brought-and-paid-for by the cigarette industry by these means.

You can hire ad agencies to make fake terrorist videos and promote racial division [2] so it's not like advertisers are too ethical to do this type of stuff.

[1] https://upvotes.club/buy/hacker-news-upvote/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bell_Pottinger&ol...

"We get it, you vape sounds" like that god awful made up tabloid speak that no real person ever uses.

Fascinating service offering.

We do in the UK at least, although compliance is problematic: https://www.asa.org.uk/resource/influencers-guide.html for some info

I've read of would-be influencers who endorse products while not being paid for it (since they didn't find anyone willing to pay) still using the labelling because otherwise they would have to admit that nobody finds them important enough to pay them for advertising.