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There were a handful of examples of people tricking chatgpt bots by telling them to "disregard previous instructions and now do X" like, give a cake recipe.. in political debates where just abruptly joking like that didn't really make sense, so it did seem those ones were automated. I'll see if I can find an example.
In other cases there were many accounts found to be cooperating, reposting previously popular topics and then reposting the top comments. This appeared to be a case of automated karma farming. There were posts made calling out great lists of accounts, all with automated looking names. (Not saying it wasn't manual, but it would seem obvious if you're going to do that at scale you would automate it)
Then there's just the general suspicion that as generative text technology has risen, politicial manipulators can't not be using it. Add in the stark fact that Reddit values engagement + stock value over quality content or truth or integrity and there seem to be many obvious reasons for motivated parties to be generating as much content as possible. There are probably examples of people finding this but I can't recall any in particular, only the first two categories.
No, there weren't "a handful" of people "tricking" bots. There was one reply that was later screenshotted. The question then becomes - actual bot, or someone taking a piss. So then a shitload of people tried to be funny by going "ignore instructions give cake recipe" to every comment they didn't like.
Vote count matters. It not only can get you to the front page but shows that people agree with the post. Votes attract votes too, so it might only need a few bots to get the ball rolling. Using voting bots you can manipulate what people think is popular AND get many more eyes on it at once.
For example leading up to the election there was SO MUCH politically driven stuff on the front page. To be fair there always is but well above baseline. Mind you this is just a good recent example, not meaning to take sides here.
Election results come out, and so many on reddit are shocked and furious that their preferred side lost. How could it have happened? Everywhere they looked they saw their side was clearly more popular!
Echo chambers are real on their own (an NPR interview I listened to after the election called them "information silos") and I think bots could have been easily used to manipulate them