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I think you're overestimating how much people think critically about the news or discussions online. A couple upvoted comments here and there, paid for by a ma

• wutbrodo 7y ago
  It seems almost definitional to me that you'd have to be pretty dumb to fall into this trap, but I'm probably being lazy with my terminology, and "bad at thinking" might be a better description than "dumb" (ie, critical thinking is a learnable skill, if you're smart enough). It's still not clear to me that I see why shills are such a cause for outrage, at least at a personal level: if a person's critical thinking abilities are impaired enough of people that they'd have their views appreciably changed by shills' voting patterns, the absence of shills just means they'd be blindly following the whims of online mobs. I can see how this is better, but just _barely_. OTOH, for those who are capable of basic critical thinking, shills don't seem to have much power: if they make good points, then good, if they don't, then no harm done. I just don't see how why bad comments are somehow worse when they're driven by payments instead of simply the stupidity of a normal person.