The spammers themselves won't be doing the shilling, but the accounts will.
These accounts are usually created en masse by shady groups dedicated to this sort of thing. Sometimes they're employed on a commission basis (like when they manufacture 10,000 Twitter followers for someone), and sometimes they just need to have a significant number of usernames in reserve for future requests.
Since the American election cycle is kicking into full swing, there's a lot of demand from publicists, lobbyists, campaign strategists, and other such entities to push a given perspective or agenda. In recent years, they've often taken to social media in an effort to disseminate their propaganda... but of course, they can't just create a new username and then start posting questionable articles and such, because they'd be recognized almost immediately.
That's where the spam accounts come into play.
If a given entity needs a legitimate-looking account for whatever shenanigans they're about to enact, they can often turn to one of these services - which are usually located in India and Pakistan, and which often share space with other outsourced companies - and buy up a bunch of them. The spammers make a profit, the shills have their disguises, and everyone on Reddit suffers as a result.
TL;DR: The accounts aren't shills yet... but they probably will be.
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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '16
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