I can see this being true. It's in how much XBox is praised relative to their user base on social media, the formation of narratives and scripts around things like Game Pass and the acquisitions, and the 'evil Sony' mantra. There's patterns that develop which make it stand out.
A good example is Game Pass. For quite some time, it absolutely dominated gaming discussion. There was the catchphrase (best deal in gaming), regular gushing about money saved, how developers loved it, how pro-consumer it was, how smart it was to put first-party on day one, and complaining that MS rivals didn't do it too. A lot of the claims made no sense, though - how games sell more when they're on the service, how developers loved it when it would cost them direct sales, how it was pro-consumer, the fact that putting games on day one would drastically decrease profitability, etc. Then, when MS was forced to admit it bleeds money, cannibalizes games sales, and developers stepped forward to criticize it - all that stopped. No use in continuing to spread lies when the truth is already out so that particular astroturfing campaign was scrapped.
It's all so organized with utterly clear motives. Though, I think along with bots there is a sizable portion of shills and paid media too.
www.meltwater.com
blog.hubspot.com
www.reedpop.com
