I don’t think its even paid shills. We have generative AI now, and can VPN with fake accounts pretty easily as regular consumers. If we can do it, they can do it on a larger scale and professionally, and not just ‘their side’, but global rivals.
If another country wants your country to do something stupid, all they have to do is get a bot army to upvote bad ideas and pump out memes and comments supporting whatever policy you think will negatively impact your rival.
If they’re NOT doing this already, then they’re terrible at their jobs, and I don’t think they’re honestly that incompetent.
That said, don’t assume they’re only trying to influence everyone other than you. All that social media data created a system to predict who you are and what buttons to push to get you to act.
I think it’s a legal issue, honestly. When printers first came out there was a fear that people would just print money and other illegal things, so printer firmware had to print out security identifiers on everything in yellow ink so it can be traceable. That’s also why yellow ink always goes out first, and why it complains about yellow ink when trying to only print black and white.
If that’s law, then it could be illegal to use firmware that does not have these features, and anyone making fimware that ‘just prints’ may be held liable.
Thus is all just an educated guess though, but seems plausible.