The astroturfing was more of the 'submarine' type [0] that took skill and effort for more niche products than the more low effort mass spam & fraud types you see on amazon and such.

I remember talking to an accquantance who had a marketer for their kickstarter-esque product and how they leverage reddit to generate interest for their thing via some astroturfing behavior years ago.

http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html