Of course people are using bots/sock puppet accounts it's just difficult to quantify would be interesting to drill into the blockchain and find out as a % how much sbd is being transferred to these type of accounts.
Hopefully steem can overcome this as spammy post's are as bad as advertising in my opinion wasting click space and revenue
Eventually we will build better systems that majority enjoy more. Since this community the users are invested with their Steem Power and with their VESTS shares. Which means that people will care more about how this platforms future will be. Since the service only has been online for around 2 years I find it impressive how great it runs. So exciting where it will be in 5 years down the line.