Today a large part of the social media comments, articles and reviews on controversial subjects are written by diverse armies of paid shills, "fact-checking", creating fake news, exposing "fake news" with fake news, whitewashing their employers and smearing critics. This was documented by The Intercept in 2014 and by political campaigners in 2016. Corporations like Google, Twitter and Facebook, powerful private interest groups (Club of Rome, climate change, global taxes, vaccinations etc) and state agencies, spend hundreds of millions for this modern and extended PR.
Canon last year spent over 400 million dollars on public relations and advertising. Almost double what the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation pays, which is in the media all the time. The latter has given over $2 million to groups such as fact-checker Africa Check ($1.48 million), media company Gannett ($499,651), and the journalism school the Poynter Institute ($382,997). In return, when you google "gates foundation fact checkers millions", the second link goes to the Poynter Institute-owned fact-checker Politifact.com, where their "factcheckers" whitewash the Gates Foundation.
The only reason we ever knew that, for example, the Clinton campaign was hiring professional shills to pose as real Hillary supporters online in order to deceive people and manipulate public discourse is because they were forced to disclose it due to FEC regulations.
https://extranewsfeed.com/media-war-toolkit-the-seven-deadliest-weapons-against-establishment-propaganda-d535c311d0eb