This is (most likely) a case of poor or absent instance administration, and it looks like it’s being managed well enough, but I do wonder what recourse there is against bad actors setting up their own instance, populating it with bots, and using them outside the influence of anyone else. For one, how do we tell which instances are just bot havens? Obviously we can make inferences based on active users and speed of growth, but a smart person could minimize those signs to the point of being unnoticeable. And if we can, what do we do with instances that have been identified? There’s defederation, but that would only stop their influence on the instances that defederated. The content would still be open to voting from those instances, and those votes would manifest on instances that haven’t defederated them. It would require a combined effort on behalf of the whole Fediverse to enforce a “ban” on an instance. I can’t really see any way to address these things without running contrary to the decentralized nature of the platform.