Beyond examples, it would be highly surprising if they weren't doing it. I think the burden of proof is on the person saying that they wouldn't do the thing that any sensible realist actor would do to a rival. That would be a level of bizarre incompetence that is too much to fathom.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covi...
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/16/1035851/facebook...
https://openai.com/index/disrupting-deceptive-uses-of-AI-by-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_and_Black_Lives_Matter
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3266870/onli...
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/29/politics/iran-covert-influenc...
It's a popular misinformation technique of news companies to do this - planting a false idea in the heads of their enthusiastic audience using truthful information presented in a blustery way that leads people to believe something it doesn't actually say.
You said it's often a troll farm or LLMs controlled by an intelligence agency. I don't see any evidence for that. Unless you take the pedantic meaning of "often" to be "not never but possibly hardly ever".
I'm not denying that it happens, but that it's as significant as you presented it to be.