What sucks is that while OP managed to track down the fraudulent nature of r/MarchAgainstTrump it was easier because it opened as a dead sub and continues as a dead sub. When such a significant percentage of the activity is centered around the same group of accounts it's much easier to put the pieces together. There is almost certainly the same kind of fuckery happening in subs like r/politics but it's far more difficult to put it together because any shilling/botting/rulebreaking can hide among each other. While I haven't found any real lead on it, and I'm trying, I'm fairly certain there's some shilling/botting for The Independent going on in there (and maybe other subs too). The most trashy clickbait,, sensationalized headline, no-content articles get upvoted to 20k/30k/40k or more very quickly and almost always gets gilded (payment for posting perhaps?). It's almost *always* The Independent when that happens. That can't be a coincidence. The mods are really passive about that stuff though. I'm 100% convinced they know that sub is going to hell and is compromised content wise and is just trying to clean up the comments section. Last year I rooted out several accounts to the mods in r/politics that were very clearly sold accounts or caved into shilling. It was painfully obvious when you go from casually posting in science based subreddits ovr 3 years to exclusively posting several Trump hit pieces daily in r/politics from only 1 or 2 sites. Now the shilling is becoming more sophisticated and using a network of accounts to avoid that. They still have to make up some phony account activity to look legit on the surface but even some minor investigations can root them out. Another account I rooted out in r/politics last summer has a single comment that got like 3-4 karma. Very first post was in a reposted r/AskReddit thread and it was the top comment of the originally posted thread. Almost certainly coordinated with whoever posted the thread initially.