I think they would likely only need to watch enough to know it was entheta and catalog it. Too much more and they'd risk a sec check.
The OP question is fascinating to me. How many public, and staff, are watching, and reading? However, here are my thoughts as to who does the "professional" work, the silent internet surveillance:
I suppose non-Scientologists could do that as well. Like, lawyers or PIs. They might have offered or suggested the "necessity" of such activities to DM themselves. Even if he isn't aware of some of the dynamics or the importance of the internet, non-Scientologist lawyers and PIs do know these things. I suppose he is, at last to some degree, ready to listen to their "professional opinions", no matter how megalomaniacal and arrogant he is and to which degree he believes in the "tech". If any of these people meets him personally or they have a phone talk or screen conference or even just write him a letter, I suppose they know how to flatter him to get him to listen. There's money there, after all.
And there's that: no matter how deeply (or superficially) entrenched he is in the "tech" and in the sense of his own grandiosity, but he knows his supply of minions (deeply indoctrinated and professional enough for him) isn't endless. That's one of the reasons for "The Hole". He's a kind of boss who "burns people",
but, consider this: he wants to burn them for his personal joy and hissyfits, not because he loses one after another to the "entheta" of the internet and the press. He wants to play with the whales and obviously likes to focus on certain things, which also means he has to have
some people who do all the stuff he's not interested in, whichever it is. And he knows that internet activities put people at risk. He doesn't have to have Scientologists doing internet surveillance.
Yes, we're seeing people commenting on articles or videos all the time, who might be real Scientologists from various orgs, doing "amendments" of some sort, or - I couldn't ever recognize it - they are OSA doing their "putting out theta messages" or disruption/deflection job, but the amount of these activities is actually realistically low, even considering numerous sock puppets and fresh accounts.
Sure, non-Scientologists could write that stuff as well, after some reading, and if there would be considerably more of it than there is, we would have reason to assume that this is the case, but as things are, their overwhelm in terms of numbers is palpable by now. After all, this is a degree of professionality, and "outsourcing", I don't trust Co$, and DM, to apply.
I'd trust any big concern or intelligence agency to try to (subliminally) manipulate opinions, I'd say they do that, but there are the visible attempts of Co$ to do just that - their "theta messages" and the harassment of critics and the "it's all just innuendo" posts - and if that is their ideal of how to do this job effectively (and Hubbard's "tech" tells just that), well, then they are lost.
It has been told there is a "chain of command", from the lawyers down. Lawyers hide PIs, PIs hide other PIs, all to hide DM's involvement and to protect the Cherch. People are watched and harassed by Co$ all the time. They have PIs (and wannabe-PIs) regularly doing the most despicable and even illegal things for them. Generally spoken, money (and connections) can buy everything, from people to carry your furniture, to the kids in the neighborhood for throwing eggs at someone's house, to contract killers. (I'm not saying Co$ actually did this but I'd say this is the most despicable and outrageous thing to buy with money, aside from biological weapons maybe, and so it's my example for the unlucky fact that everything (bad) can be bought by money.) Seriously, if money can buy immoral PIs or even a professional killer, and if money can buy forged product reviews, then it can buy internet "agents" (watchers) and even trolls as well, aye?? No, I don't expect DM to have ordered this personally but instead someone down the chain (although "Semioldguard" smelled of Pow Pow).
The thing is, if something embarrassing or "threatening" for the cult is mentioned in a new Youtube spoof or wherever, they (well, DM) has to bring it to the lawyers anyways, to write some letters or whatever is done. IMO, there is no reason not to involve the lawyers in these activities from the beginning. Co$ always has had non-Scientologist "allies"; just like celebrities have agents who don't need to be fans of them to do their work, sort it all out, scan the news and celebrity magazines, and bring good
and bad PR to their client's attention, or to publicly parrot ridiculous lies and dementis for them.
So in the case of Co$, why not ordering non-Scientologists to (order someone to) look out for that kind of stuff, instead of risking to lose minions to "entheta"? DM might not care about what happens to some distant org, but what about the staff around him? Serious question - am I not getting something? As a never-in, I'm always afraid that's the case since I'll never have a feeling for the inner workings and the "habits" of the cult (and DM) and get it wrong.
Slight derail (a hapless although nicely patterned bud that hopefully doesn't bloom into a flesh-eating orchid, some things considered): Co$ is a cult that follows self-destructive "management tech" and especially its leader is behaving illogical and is mentally disturbed. As we have seen, they are not aware of the dynamics and influence of the internet, or of the unspoken rules of Twitter, etc. At the utmost, their lawyers are. These lawyers can order goons to do stuff goons do, but it's more than unlikely that they -
or DM - hire state-of-the-art professionals of undue influence and subliminal mind control. If there are any such professionals/talents, they simply work in the advertise industry and try to do their best (worst) there, or they work for governments. Whether some of them are sociopaths or not. That's what people don't get, if they approach the question - what might Co$ do in terms of PR control or (hidden) internet tricks - while just thinking of alllll that money they have available. There are many highly effective and feasible dirty tricks, from open (advertise, PR in the classical sense) to sneaky ones, but the money of Co$ actually is only available to
David Miscavige.
Questions like "if I were OSA" lead to nowhere if the person doing that mindgame is
comparatively sane - and decidedly more intelligent and creative than DM, or Pow, and even Mr. Immoral "Immajusttakeyourmoney" Lawyer.