This is clearly the trend for Reddit- posts in general interest subs are frequently reposts by bots and commented on by bots that are karma farming so that they can post and upvote these scams.
The scary thing is that this would be easier to accomplish on Lemmy, we just aren’t big enough to be worth their time yet.
The dead Internet theory is an online conspiracy theory that asserts that the Internet now consists almost entirely of bot activity and automatically generated content that is manipulated by algorithmic curation, marginalizing organic human activity.[1][2][3][4] These intelligent bots are assumed to have been made, in part, to help manipulate algorithms and boost search results in order to ultimately manipulate consumers.[5] Further, proponents of the theory accuse government agencies of using bots to manipulate public perception.[1] The date given for this "death" is generally around 2016 or 2017.
Bots are created to generate media and web content as filler, not as a conspiracy. It's not government lead, it's done by social media users, media/news organizations, and others.
However, there are how many billions online? Internets not dead.