What started as a Fast Company reporter getting a free mattress from a friend’s friend led to a web of lawsuits, corruption, and a revelation of just exactly how blurred internet reviews and advertisings had become.

The long story short? A great number of mattress review sites are often simply paid advertising for mattress companies. In other cases, the mattress company simply buys out the review site. This happened in 2016 – so you can probably expect this method of taking over review sites to have become even more popular.

Some of the worst offenders? Bed-in-a-box company Casper was known to sue bloggers that gave unfavorable reviews while promoting bloggers that gave good reviews. Casper apparently tried to use cyber-warfare tactics and even tried to buy out a review site that tried to blow the whistle on them.

• Fast Company report ‘The War To Sell You A Mattress Is An Internet Nightmare‘