I don't see what the Obama presidency has to do with anything. Steve Bannon was selling WoW gold and Epstein wanted microtranstions in CoD, so they have their target demographic. This was also around the time that political astroturfing was getting more active on reddit and that was the platform it was easy to detect. Everywhere else, it would be harder to tell.

It's the same logic where neo-nazis would try recruiting outside of punk shows, but punk shows got better about kicking the neo-nazis out. With 4chan, they just outright bought the venue.