This only applies to overt ads which are hardly the problem. It does nothing to mitigate the armies of astroturfers influencing public opinion.
I wonder what the best way to combat large-scale astroturfing on a platform like twitter would be; My first thought would be a rep system akin to those of StackOverflow or HN, but I'm not sure how you would implement it such that there's not a large impact on legitimate new users - there's no system like upvotes Twitter could use to stratify.
So you, and your company's data, are the product that reddit monetizes.
Report them to the FTC because paid endorsements/reviews/etc are subject to disclosure [1].
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftc...
For the most part, people don’t look to social media to find content that helps them form their opinions; they look to it to reinforce already held opinions. It's an echo chamber.
That means astroturfing may lead to more divisiveness, as people seek out content that makes them more sure than ever that their opinion is the one and only correct one. But it does not “influence public opinion” since nobody is jumping to the other side of an issue based on astroturfing. It just makes the world a more hostile place.
Also, pushing things further to the extremes/reinforcing the belief that "Everyone I speak to agrees with me on <topic> so I should therefor stand up for it because it's right" isn't less bad than fooling someone who hasn't yet formed their opinion.