Was looking on /r/Apple last week and was shocked by the number of people who are apparently full on free market champions or Apple shareholders or both. That place has always had it's fair share of them, but they seem to have been ramped up to the max now.
Social media monitoring and marketing is a big business. There are tools that alert agencies to any critical posts for their brand/celebrity/product/keyword so they can defend or at the very least deflect any criticism with sock-puppet accounts. These accounts seem like normal individuals with lots of history but are either accounts sold to these agencies or home-grown to seem "organic".
Looking from outside people think karma and posts/comments count mean nothing but accounts with good standing, posts, comments has a big market in black hat marketing sites.
Seriously though -- how the fuck did Apple get away with trying to be a monopoly 24/7 for 17 years? The iPhone launch and everything since could not have been clearer.