Are there paid shills, hired trolls, and web bots on boards.ie?

It is finally starting to dawn on many people in the West that their perception of reality on social media is completely warped, and that many organisations, movements, and social justice campaigns have been little more than front groups for intelligence agencies.

Just today, we are seeing that two conservative Twitter personalities are actually Russian inventions:
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/presidential/russia-fake-twitter-facebook-posts-accounts-trump-election-jenna-abrams-20171103.html?amphtml=y&mobi=true

Not only that, but the Russians have also been carefully creating movements on the other side too, such as the Californian independence campaign:http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-41853131

Russia has also been revealed to have created multiple 'Black lives matter' accounts, and alt-right accounts too, in order to create social divisions and play both sides off against each other:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/if-russia-can-create-fake-black-lives-matter-accounts-who-will-next/2017/10/15/ffb2e01e-af79-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html

But I doubt Russia are the only ones doing this.
Now, many of you might be wondering if there are paid shills and influences on boards.ie.
In my opinion, there absolutely are. Certain posters have a very noticeable trend of only appearing for certain topics, and disappearing again until the next similar debate pops up. (There are also certain posters who group together and thank each others posts repeatedly, but they seem be to more partisan in nature.)

So, my question is this-how would boards.ie know if there are paid shills and automated web bot accounts, and what can they do about it?