>I'd be pretty surprised if the US employed people to do anything like this on domestic US sites at any scale. What would they post?
Call me a conspiracy nut, but now that social media is how most young people get their news, I wouldn't be surprised if the US gov paid people to post and promote bullshit fluff to keep people distracted from major events in the world. When those major stories do make it to the masses, there are people to comment about how it's a "non-issue" and "we need to focus on more important things" or that the US is doing what's necessary to protect its interests and the world's.
Just a couple examples:
All throughout the build up to the Manning trial, I distinctly remember most commenters on tech news sites supporting Manning. Upon conviction, I checked the comments on Ars Technica and the comments were overwhelmingly along the lines of "Let this be a sign to all future traitors.", "Lock HIM up and throw away the key!!" There was a comment about how suspicious the shift was, and the next three pages of comments were along the lines of, "How do we know YOU aren't working for someone?", "We never supported TRAITORS like YOU.", etc. It was bizarre.
The overwhelming coverage of The Interview days after the CIA torture report came out. People were outraged, but then every corner of the internet was plastered with patriotism and how we need to release some awful comedy to stick it to some dirt poor totalitarian state. Now people have forgotten about that movie, as well as the CIA's issues.
I also recall a huge amount of support for an invasion and increased funding of rebels in Syria back when the US government claimed Assad was using chemical weapons against his people. What shocked me was that the people most calling for war was liberal/feminist discussion circles. That all seems to be forgotten now that a group of rebels called ISIS is our enemy of the week.