I suspect there is a strong likelihood that this is what has happened. At the very least Reddit clearly is not doing enough to combat them given how easily I was able to find so many bots.

I was trying to investigate it further as I had found some older banned accounts which were doing something similar and which I could provably connect to a marketing firm. So they are another potential suspect for the newer bots however in the midst of trying to browse accounts and connect the dots Reddit went and patched the workaround I was using to search the hidden posts.

Now when these bots hide their post history there is no way of finding it on Reddit and it really wouldn’t be obvious to casual users that they are bots so this form of marketing could be extremely effective and very predatory. If they aren’t behind the bots they sure do seem to be making a lot of changes which actively empower them.

Before they patched it I saved a lot of bot posts containing links for a few smaller companies which had previously tried to promote their business on Reddit themselves. So I suspect those companies have signed up for an advertising package but it’s just a question of whether that package is with Reddit themselves or with another company. If I can get enough attention on this I might try contacting them to ask.