Anyone know why the bots are starting to become more prevalent? I think I’ve seen 3 in the last week 
One reason might be the upcoming Midterms Election.
How so? You may ask. Well, you all know that the algorithms raise influencers by the count and quality of their followers and subscribers. Said followers are ranked by their activity on other forums - that feature might be created to tell humans from bots because "virtual followers" aren't as trustworthy than real ones. Obviously that doesn't work, there's even bots that have their own websites supporting their fake history.
This BB has prolly been hacked
No, as others have said signing on doesn't require hacking. Otherwise we'd all be hackers! Filling forms is a built-in feature in every browser and for AI clicking "register" or "submit" isn't a problem. Typing a relevant looking post also seems to be quite easy for the current bots.