Odysee accused Rumble of generating fake traffic https://archive.ph/aBukJ. In response, Rumble sent a letter to Odysee, threatening to sue if they don't remove the tweet https://archive.ph/jOQCo
Odysee removed the tweet, but then left this snarky non-apology https://archive.vn/TLQdA
Pretending to have higher engagement by falsely boosting numbers in order to to retain and increase customers is a tactic that has been used by some social media companies during their critical early period. I'm not convinced by Odysee's very limited evidence that Rumble has been doing this however, and Rumble would be in significant legal trouble if it was caught lying, since it is acquiring external funding.
Yeah, but if they can't build enough engagement early on, they never will. Reddit's just gamed by everyone (except the right). With YouTube, it's more manipulating the algorithm for trending, recommendations, and who they add or remove from the subscribed list. YouTube also does plenty of manipulation of monetization.
I don't remember which one, but there was a somewhat recent multiplayer shooter that secretly boosted new players' stats. Their reason is some early wins kept those players for longer than if they just got destroyed by the more experienced players. I haven't heard of other games doing it, but it wouldn't be hard to bias the gacha mechanics that are in most of them now.