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Notes -
Did you read the threads? The comments were all political, not selling products.
Also, as a Reddit user, I can tell you that I almost never encounter any "bots" shilling products. It simply doesn't work. You can go into a user's history quite easily. And if someone posts 10 comments for "Product X rules!", someone else will notice, post that, and they'll be downvoted to oblivion.
There is value to be had in chilling the room and creating a false consensus in an overall community.
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The argument is that this is how they gain provenance. Since people are suspicious of new accounts, gaining karma and age by commenting is the solution. The bots don't care who they are copying, only that there is someone to copy.
Secondly, the fact that a person can go into another's history doesn't mean they will, and it doesn't mean that you'll be able to pick out a pattern. What if an account just belongs to someone who is both deadset on the products they like and genuinely provides them as support. No one is out here saying "Product X rules!", the examples on HackerNews literally involved "talking" about the issue and what is supposedly "good" to use.
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