I wouldn’t say paranoid, more that it’s how that works on larger communities like Reddit. When there’s an audience, the companies find creative ways to reach them, which is how astroturfing became a thing.

The tradeoff of being on a smaller site where that stuff doesn’t happen just means it’s harder for information to spread when there’s no one who wants to post it. It’s hard to find that goldilocks zone of a decently large community of people passionate about a hobby before it gets big enough to look profitable to someone