Conspiracy theory time? Conspiracy theory time. I think the trillion dollar companies have enough money, they can hire people as 'plants'. Okay, before this i

Conspiracy theory time? Conspiracy theory time. I think the trillion dollar companies have enough money, they can hire people as 'plants'. Okay, before this is marked as crazy talk: Historically this has happened, this isnt a new invention. A company needs to survive, not be ethical. Using third parties give plausible deniability. I look at the atrocious state of LibreOffice, and I'm pretty sure someone from Microsoft is screwing things up. Might just be a little bit of friction and fake concern over a useful change. Maybe they even find someone who already does this and fund it as a full time job. I look at Firefox, and I wonder if Google somehow is significantly influencing things there. Google keeps Firefox alive to prevent anti-trust. But they make sure funding is diverted from browser to wasteful projects. When I worked for a fortune 20 company, we had a major, irrational push away from python into Microsoft Power Automate. Other people were convinced either our director was a Microsoft plant, or was getting some sort of kickback. Here is my question: What is the business called where people do this? Like if these companies paid a third party, what is this categorized as? (For instance, paying for reddit upvotes and comments is called 'Reputation Management')