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Re:Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter by ska on Wednesday December 22, 2021 @05:59PM (#29656584)
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.

Re:Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter by walterbell on Wednesday December 22, 2021 @06:54PM (#29657013)
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?...
Re:Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter by alistairSH on Wednesday December 22, 2021 @07:38PM (#29657353)
Yep. I see it locally with shill groups acting at the behest of real estate developers.
Re:Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter by xxpor on Wednesday December 22, 2021 @11:56PM (#29658799)
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.
Re:Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter by ethbr0 on Thursday December 23, 2021 @05:36AM (#29660536)
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?