I'm sure this happens to some extent, but based on my experience as an employee who interacts with people on social media as part of my role I also think you ar

I'm sure this happens to some extent, but based on my experience as an employee who interacts with people on social media as part of my role I also think you are underestimating how many people legitimately ask questions on Reddit / Hacker News / Twitter etc. I'm sure that there are some bad actors out there that post a question as well as the answer and that use an upvote ring to boost their comments for visibility, but there are also employees that just respond to legitimate comments that they see on the internet. As part of my role for Amazon Web Services I frequently respond to comments on platforms like Reddit, Twitter, and Hacker News. When I see someone asking a question about an AWS service, saying something inaccurate about AWS, or who seems like they could legitimately benefit from some knowledge I can share with them then I'll post a reply. You can check through my comment history if you are interested, but here is a recent example of such an interaction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19282477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19282477 There are quite a few people out there like me who monitor relevant discussions and interact with people on social media websites as part of their job role. I would never "astroturf", not only because its unethical, but also because there is plenty of legitimate and relevant discussion that I can contribute to when needed without needing to resort to creating artificial questions.