states use the roundabout way a lot too. when people think about state-controlled or state-sponsored operations, they think about movie villains making evil plans in the background, which makes them fail to understand real threats, fail to register them as threats. if they screamed corrupt in your face they wouldn't be doing their jobs right. states work in complex, multi-layered ways. they have data on everyone. they can easily detect easy-to-control figures. they don't always control them with threats, they also control them by modifying their feeds, or by making them friends with other agents tasked with influencing them. they control them by not letting them know they are controlled. once they can prove these individuals are controllable, they can boost them on social media like X or YT, or in google search results. give them power and influence. they don't even have to control them. they can fund, and give influence to, certain people in the circle. they can boost or deboost people with certain ideas. it's most visible when a channel that has no influence suddenly gets boosted to the home page for no reason. fake comments are also a way, they're common under yt videos. if you don't already have a formed opinion, comments can easily affect what you think about the video. state controlled people are just normal guys. you shouldn't look at the vibe. you should look at the raw action and ideas.