Back in October, the Pew Research Center published a study in which the majority of experts predicted that, given time, the fake-news problem plaguing Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other tech giants will only get worse. The human brain, they posited, is not wired to keep up with the breakneck pace of technological change. Therefore, in the future, “manipulative actors will use new digital tools to take advantage of humans’ inbred preference for [the] comfort and convenience . . . they find in reinforcing echo chambers.” And though a panicked Silicon Valley has rushed to promise it will enact new measures to combat fake news, a new report from The New York Times illustrates the massive scale of the problem, which is inextricably linked to the way information is consumed online.

The Times report details the doings of a shadowy company called Devumi, which allegedly charges customers for followers, and re-tweets, plays, and likes on social media. The company reportedly fields at least 3.5 million automated accounts used to boost the follower and engagement numbers of its more than 200,000 customers, who reportedly include professional athletes, musicians, journalists, a one-time American Idol contestant, models, TED speakers, and even a Twitter board member. The issue is particularly rampant on Twitter: “By some calculations, as many as 48 million of Twitter’s reported active users—nearly 15 percent—are automated accounts designed to simulate real people, though the company claims that number is far lower,” the Times reports. (Twitter forbids the purchase or sale of re-tweets or followers, and Devumi founder German Calas denied the claims, saying in a statement, “The allegations are false, and we do not have knowledge of any such activity.”)

In the wake of the Times investigation, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman tweeted that he had opened an investigation into Devumi and its “apparent sale of bots using stolen identities . . . impersonation and deception are illegal under New York law.” But attempting to eradicate fake accounts can be likened to a game of whack-a-mole. Earlier this month, Twitter revealed that it had discovered more than 1,000 new accounts attributable to a Kremlin-connected troll farm, bringing the total number up to 3,814. Similar accounts reportedly re-tweeted Donald Trump almost 500,000 times during the final months of the 2016 election. (By comparison, they re-tweeted Hillary Clinton’s account 50,000 times).

These ghostly accounts serve as mercenaries in the online culture wars that seem likely to worsen as “fake news” gains popularity as a political cudgel. “It comes down to motivation: There is no market for the truth,” an executive consultant told Pew. “The public isn’t motivated to seek out verified, vetted information. They are happy hearing what confirms their views. And people can gain more creating fake information (both monetary and in notoriety) than they can keeping it from occurring.” Starr Roxanne Hiltz, a professor of information systems, added that platforms’ efforts to untangle the problem—Facebook is attempting to bow out of the news-sharing business altogether—isn’t likely to change things. “People on systems like Facebook are increasingly forming into ‘echo chambers’ of those who think alike,” she said. “They will keep unfriending those who don’t, and passing on rumors and fake news that agrees with their point of view.”

The Times report comes as user trust in social-media platforms hits a five-year low. But some companies seem to have overlooked the bitter lessons of the past year—Google is reportedly testing a news app called Bulletin, which lets anyone upload news stories using text, photo, and video that are instantly available on Google News and in Google search results. Worse, the multi-pronged approach of companies like Devumi makes it clear that fake news was not quarantined to the 2016 election, but is woven into the fabric of social media itself; in November, Facebook disclosed that it had an estimated 60 million fake accounts on its platform, at least twice as many as it had previously estimated. Ultimately, we’re reliant on Big Tech to fix the problem it created—a problem that, at this point, may have spiraled beyond its control. “The information environment is built on the top of telecommunication infrastructures and services developed following the free-market ideology,” a data scientist told Pew, “where ‘truth’ or ‘fact’ are only useful as long as they can be commodified as market products.”