In terms of personal experience, I've not seen anything as explicit as this article. And nothing with a giant market cap coin. More like a gray area between pump and dump and a bunch of over enthusiastic marketers.
Like I'll be reading a forum and notice a ton of people hyping up a small market cap coin. Check their post histories and they are generally new or they've only talked about the coin. Eventually find the slack/discord for the coin, people are posting links to forums/threads/mentions of the coin in the discord, and people are organizing shifts to give support. The comments are all purportedly coming from a genuine place (and to an extend they may be) but they were posted as if they were just random people stumbling across this discussion -- not an organized group explicitly trying to spread the good word.