I think bots really are a product of the system, most notably - the built in promotion feature not working.
As well as a content creation and curation platform, steemit is also a free-market, capitalist, self policing anarchy and people will just go down whatever route seems to be the best for them at the time. The idea being that if people don't like something enough - it'll be down-voted to oblivion, but somewhere along the way - low quality content apparently became more acceptable to the masses.