> One example of them clearly being the baddies is them paying people to social media astroturf to defend the roundup pesticide online [2].

It certainly looks bad but I'm not sure the logic really follows.

It's just modern PR. Companies used to just do that by having good relationships with journalist but now social media has taken a lot of that role away. It's a fairly natural transition for companies to make and I'd be surprised if you couldn't find a lot of major corporations that don't do something similar.

And, also, it doesn't necessarily follow that they are either willingly lying or that their products are unsafe.