Musk in his tit for tat with Trump recently revealed huge numbers of the Internet comments supporting MAGA were foreign plants. He didn't reveal which accounts were bots though. All these comments supporting censorship appear mostly on platforms that would love to ID every person on their platform.

Internet comments do not represent anything anymore that doesn't manifest in the actual world. They are excellent at having a few influence the many

I agree with you, and probably more than it sounds. But I think the point you make is still too strong a case. ie, even if the online comments are ~90% foreign influence it doesn't also follow that everything is astroturfing or that real people do not discuss issues online.

To your point though, maybe we can no longer reliably tell the difference, and so it'd be better to adopt your view as a rule of thumb.