Look, I give them credit for coming clean to the public. And a lot of people use Reddit to promote their business, band or other brand (though they do it honestly, not by purchasing a boost). But the more well-known the technique of buying upvotes becomes, the worse the site will be for myself and other users.
Early paid upvotes are the seed for later organic upvotes. You don't even need to spend $200 to get them.
The onus is on Reddit to detect and punish voting manipulation.
When someone proposed a similar voting manipulation trick on Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13676362), dang explicitly notes that such techniques are a good data point for voting manipulation detection algorithms.
While Reddit seems less than competent to prevent this kind of manipulation, it does apparently violate Reddit's terms of service.
"You agree not to interrupt the serving of reddit, introduce malicious code onto reddit, make it difficult for anyone else to use reddit due to your actions, attempt to manipulate votes or reddit’s systems, or assist anyone in misusing reddit in any way. It takes a lot of work to maintain reddit. Be cool."
I am not sure it is even a question of competency. I think it is a question of motivation. It is the same reason why Twitter doesn't crack down on their bots. Both sites have an inherit interest in appearing popular. Having 50k upvotes or 50m followers looks more impressive than 25k and 25m. It is possible that those companies feel the value of those increased numbers is greater than the potential damage bots do to the community. HN doesn't have the same motivation since HN is more of a vanity project with a bigger focus on the good of the community.
On the other hand, Digg died because they were effectively letting publishers buy front-page slots ahead of organic submissions. If Reddit becomes known for manipulation, it could also suffer (though its scale, heterogeneity and skepticism of shilling are significant antibodies).
It's hard for me to believe that you can't just pay Reddit, Inc., directly, for whatever manipulation you want. It probably just costs more, and needs to be done with more discretion. But then, I lean cynical and conspiratorial that way.
I remember researching this back in 2014. You could buy 50 upvotes for about $350. On most mid-sized subs, an initial hit of 50-100 upvotes would get you to the 'hot' section.
Once you get to the 'hot' section, however, your content quality matters. If the content is good and/or has viral potential, it will attract votes naturally.
I was marketing for a travel site at that time. I learned that rather than paying others to push your content, you can get the same effect by posting at the right time and creating content that would naturally appeal to that subreddit.
I do know some people who've bought established Reddit accounts for $50-200 and use that to get upvotes via proxies.
Early paid upvotes are the seed for later organic upvotes. You don't even need to spend $200 to get them.