I'm not saying those people don't really exist, there are tons of them out there for sure, but we also have extensive evidence of governments doing this.

GCHQ in the UK had JTRIG using many forum disruption techniques.

There's also the Five Eyes and how they use information sharing to essentially do an end-run around being able to spy on their own citizens. Technically, they're not spying on their own citizens, a foreign nation is, they just so happen to have an agreement with that foreign nation to get info on their own citizens.

The US definitely engages in this kind of stuff on foreign nations as well. They tried to create a social media service for Cuba to influence Cuban politics and do information gathering.

Do either the UK or the US have to spy on their own citizens if they can rely on each other to run influence campaigns in each others countries? The US had to apologize to Angela Merkel for tapping her phone.

Israel has many different programs aimed at managing the PR of the state of Israel online. From paying college students to speak positively of Israel online to having "Think Tanks" use teams of people to influence Wikipedia.

We know that Hacking Team was selling their surveillance software to oppressive regimes, who were definitely using it to oppress the population. If they're using these kind of tools, they're using online disinformation tools as well.

So once again, there's tons of real life absolute maniacs when it comes to politics. There's also incentive for governments around the world to run influence campaigns for pennies on the dollar with digital tools in the digital world.