Sure. What I mostly mean is just the broad importance of understanding propaganda and how it works in order to prevent it being used against us as much as possible and to some extent how we can use it in turn. How can we ever do either if we don't know where the anti-communist rhetoric is originating in whatever given medium? This applies to everything, from how school curriculum is used to distort history, to how the MSM news parrots the ruling class line, to how feds on reddit seed conversations with tankie-hate and silence critical responses. If we don't know what the tactics used by our ideological enemies are to turn would-be allies against us, then there will never be anything we can do to counter it. (Maybe there isn't anway, but that's a pretty defeatist, nihilistic position that is evidently false based on how many of us here used to be libs ourselves whose minds got changed).

Of course propaganda used to gin up hatred towards communists isn't anything new, but the technology of social media (and imo the resulting level of sophistication) is. Having a grasp on how it gets started and grows and festers especially in left-leaning online circles is necessary if we have any hope of putting up any kind of roadblocks. I don't pretend to know exactly what we should do in each scenario, but there should be some basic differences in how we respond to genuine misunderstanding vs manufactured noise. Like if all of that anti-tankie online discourse really was just organic, just regular people with bad takes, then plain old education and discussion could go a long way in setting the record straight, at least for a lot of people. On the other hand, for any given narrative, knowing what talking points are being deliberately injected and where, will help us call that out and point it out as a lie but also as a tactic to bystanders so they know (or at least contemplate) that an agency is manipulating them right there and not just in the usual nebulous. For example, I've seen left-ish people on reddit be really surprised by who Jessica Ashooh is and the role she plays on reddit. It can be an excellent "in" in a conversation to help people realize for themselves that they shouldn't be believing some of the shit they're reading from their "fellow lefties" in their social democracy subreddit.

you won't be convincing astroturfing "people"

Completely agree. But that's rarely the point. It's the other people reading the thread that matter.

and genuine people aren't at a point where they will be willing to listen to our points anyways

I'm not so sure about that. Even if there seems to be zero headway when you're trying to get through their propagandized skulls, seeds can get planted that might grow, especially as their standard of living starts deteriorating and you've given them a plausible reason why. Of course there are plenty of lost cause fash out there too, but again... on the internet, it's the lurkers we should be aiming to get through to. If that kind of thing really isn't a threat to those doing the astroturfing, then why did the chapo sub become the largest leftist subreddit, frequently making the front page? Why did they have to ban it and shadowban so many of us that commented there? The lies and the bullshit has to be continuously maintained. They maintain it extremely well, but it does require maintenance. Anywhere we can throw a wrench in that feedback loop machine, we need to do so. We'll only know where to throw it if we have some idea how it works though.

(None of this should discredit the gold standard of countering propaganda and winning people over: positively changing their material circumstances. But we're talking about online discourse here, and there's only so much material change one can do via social media).

Hopefully that long ass response makes sense.