If Russia is willing to spend cash like that, then of course they're willing to run massive bot farms to pollute any forums they can. I'd be shocked if the US was not doing the same in any way they can. You have to ask why Trump killed Radio Free America as well when it was clearly not an big expense.
Not sure how this relates to the subject in a direct way. Radio Free America was a outlet explicitly created and utilized to spread US propaganda, but kinda sorta barely disguised as a journalistic enterprise (not really, if you were listening to RFA you knew what you were listening to.) Shutting it down seems to be a counterpoint to all of the covert participation of US intelligence on the web which has done nothing but escalate.
The obvious answer to that question is "because he's a Russian asset". But that doesn't mean the obvious answer is also the correct one.
IMHO, we're seeing another and much more concerning trend at play here... the utter and complete rejection of anything but violence by the far-right. Diplomacy? Development aid? Cultural exchange? All sorts of soft power have been under attack for decades now, and not just by the far-right but (especially when it comes to development aid) also by mainstream centrist parties across the Western world. And it's always pseudo-masculine / "strongman" BS backing the sentiment - Bernd Höcke, German AfD mastermind, comes to my mind with "we have to rediscover our masculinity" [1], so do Hungary's Viktor Orban and his denouncement of LGBT or Trump's entire Œuvre.
I'm not saying that violence or at least being prepared, ready and willing to use it is automatically bad. Far from it. But all the various forms of "soft power"? They have a lot of value, value that the far-right is all too willing to just burn for entertainment.
[1] https://blogs.taz.de/zeitlupe/2019/03/24/die-auferstehung-de...
No matter where you look, the far-right kills and maims substantially much more people than the far-left does.
If AI is being used in these areas it is less as an attempt to manipulate as it is to just create noise and engender distrust in what they hear.
Not too dissimilar to people bot-leveling in MMOs to the sell the accounts.
Account farmers: these can be people in 3rd world countries automated/not automated. Can be using hundreds of mobile phones to create accounts and do daily activity to make the account look legitimate. While they're building an activity history they are also being paid to like/follow/interact with content.
Advertisers: these are brought accounts that are used to pose inauthentic reviews of their service and inject it into discussion and to do PR
Sloppers: people who build AI pipelines and then just pump the most dogshit content directly into a platform trying to make any amount of money.
Nation State propaganda arms: These accounts build a narrative character and then join discussion pushing a certain narrative, boost real content creators who share their message and bog down discussion.
That, and probably political astroturfing. Before every election my local subreddit sees a surge of crime stories. Go figure.
It's actively encouraged by some of the platforms too. In Gmail and Google Docs, you have incessant AI prompts along the lines of "help me write this". I think LinkedIn does the same.
They aren't going to care about any of the advice in the article about not posting slop -- finding a job is (of course?) more important to them.
Can't really say they are doing anything wrong, maybe I too would have? ... Just that large scale, doesn't work
Plain advertising, governments' propaganda, political propaganda for one group or another to shift public opinion (it's done on TV networks, why would they not do online campaigns?), astroturfing by corporations promoting acceptance or fighting negative news (e.g. rideshare, AI, whatever certain wealthy personalities are doing) ... the list goes on.
HN has always been relatively influential in the tech industry and therefore worth influencing, and now the cost is very cheap - you don't even need to hire many people, so less-resourced operators will find it worthwhile (and they will also attack lower-value forums).
There are obvious benefits to controlling public discourse, right? Even if it's just to support some project you're working on.