It could be a bot swarm, but it may just be a false flag by the mods (ran by feds).
I'm jaded, but forcing "gets" was a known thing mods could do since the days of old on 4chan. When I was investigating the take over of 4chan years and years ago, the mods were being called out for forcing dubs, trips, quads, and anything they wanted.
The feds probably expanded on the manipulation in the backend tools.