I don't know if a shill-free alternative to Reddit could ever exist- I tend to think the openness and scale of Reddit (which is the whole point of it) is what allows shilling to occur. It really bums me out.

The site itself would have to be attempting to detect and flag networks of users, and take some kind of action.

Sure, but I think that is actually a very difficult problem: how do we determine whether a comment is being sincere or not? Furthermore, assuming we had a foolproof method to do this, would the site have enough funds to use it routinely and ethically? I think this is the problem we're seeing now with a large number of tech companies.

Have you tried Voat?

I couldn't stand it, but it works for some.

Every exodus from reddit to Voat is when the most toxic subreddits are closed - /r/jailbait, which was basically child porn, /r/altright, which was doxxing and putting out hitlists on those they disagreed with, some extremely racist subreddits I'd rather not write out. It's a cesspool of white supremacists and otherwise awful people.

I'm glad Voat exists, but it's not somewhere I frequent. The more Reddit and Twitter crack down on speech the faster Voat and Gab will grow.

Voats model is good but filled with angry men (and the people on fatpeoplehate seem to be mainly women from what I've read). We need a max exodus from Reddit to even the odds