There was a forum that I used to frequent that specifically cultivated political flamewars, all for clicks. A former mod actually leaked internal policies on a different site. The highest rank of mods were required to have at least three accounts (the "official" account, and two accounts that would take opposing sides in arguments). Whenever a discussion settled down it was the duty of a mod to say something inflammatory to get lots of responses. When someone actually made good points and got people to agree with each other, that poster would be banned. (Just to be cheeky, the two most common reasons for bans were "possession of alt accounts" and "trying to incite a flamewar").
Apparently the model worked well enough for them to stay in business, because they got a lot of advertising revenue.