> Indeed, seeing how slanted online discussion was, I suspect one side had many more bots, and I'm not sure if the other side had any.

I think your bias is showing. From what I recall, both sides employed the exact same tactics, and we often saw blatantly inorganic discussions popping up in random subreddits on how $(SIDE_A) was the real villain and $(SIDE_B) only had supports because they were paid bots driven by their PR firm.

Things reached a point where I'm sure the same template was used by each counterpart.

On a bigger picture, I'm not sure why anyone still goes to places like reddit and believes anything showing up in the mainpage is still organic.