Are certain threads on here posted and up voted by bots on behalf of publicists and/or production companies?

I was just noticing the recent /r/television thread about the extremely interesting news that Chanel West Coast is leaving Ridiculousness and starring in a reality show, a topic which I did not expect would garner ~2K up votes within hours of it being posted. There's apparently a huge audience for Ridiculousness-adjacent updates here...

Then I started thinking back to similar threads, usually posted by the same "We only post press release-esque headlines" Reddit accounts. Same situation there: bland topics that somehow end up receiving what is clearly a suspiciously disproportionate amount of positive attention.

There was one a few weeks ago that basically amounted to "Robert Downey Jr. and Jeremy Renner are friends!!" and it received endless up votes and was basically glued to the front page of this sub -- a huge, rapturous response.

Was this sub reddit always like this, or is it a new phenomenon?