Recently, I have used these accounts to get answers to questions: post the question with one account and ~3 bad but assertive answers with other accounts, and that's usually enough to get at least one response from someone who knows the right answer and wants to prove they are smart. All of this can now be done very easily by ChatGPT, too - it used to take effort.
This is the "dark" part of social media marketing that nobody talks about but a lot of people engage in.
Tons of accounts reposting content from ~2 months ago to create a long, legitimate-looking post history and high karma score. They then use those accounts to complain about Product X or love Product Y -- and they don't look like a shillbot. Ditto for political actors, propagandists, et al.
One Reddit user, Unidan, was famously banned for doing this with 12 accounts, and in retrospect, this sort of scheme may have "made" his success - his replies showed up as the top comment a lot (even when they were not insightful) and it got him significant name recognition.
Consensus is a different meaning. Going by how odd "a consensus" sounds I would simply assume the writer mixed both or misremembered, and I do not read further intent. Just my opinion.
