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You should be careful about judging a book by it's cover. There are a lot of companies out there now which are dedicated to faking reviews, likes and views on content - even at these sort of larger scales. The could be lots of genuine feedback in the numbers you mention, however a large chunk of it might be paid for advertising as well. If you can pretend to have that many active users or fans, it can become a self sustaining cycle that draws in ever higher numbers, so it is very useful for people to fake them. Even genuine marketing companies that claim to be offering real visitors might intermingle their numbers with fake bots in order to boost them as it is hard to build natural traffic.
I agree with you - this might be called a game in business that benefits both parties. The company will benefit from its marketing strategy - while the people interested in its services will also benefit. However, something slightly different could happen to public figures - they get natural traffic from their content because of their fans. I remember how quickly Ronaldo gained a large number of followers on his YouTube channel - I'm sure that it was natural traffic because he had a lot of fans.