Awesome food (pizza?) for thought. I am a noob and have been dabbling with the bots. As someone who is new, eager and perhaps a bit over-zealous, I think they serve a good purpose for steemians with good content and good intentions. I definitely worry about them spiraling out of control, but there does seem to be a good enough system of checks and balances built in to this platform right now (or at least a low enough volume), that most bot promoted shit content is or can be flagged, downvoted, etc. anyway, right? One idea would be for the site owners to force the bot operators to each have a team of moderators/quality control users that oversees submissions.bids, etc.
Another quick idea would be just to have some kind of copyscape-type technology implemented that checks every post for duplicate content and automatically flags/downvotes any such content.
Anyway, great stuff... thanks @meno. Time for some pizza!
hey @beauknows well I think you got the right idea there, we do have SteemCleaners and Cheetabot trying to clean the network of plagiarists and spammers. But they simply can't catch them all, the win will probably only be found if most of the community is actively participating of that task.
It's a decision that all bot operators would have to agree on, the more I think about it, the more I can see the challenges. If only one whale who owns a bot starts to curate content, he would be putting a ding on his/her pocket alone, and to ask that is not easy. Now if the all agree to curate content prior to upvoting it, and maybe even cap the bids, yes the cashflow would reduce, but in the long run it would probably help quality content get even more common, mass adoption and a higher price of Steem.
At least, its what seems logical to me. I will also have you know, i did have some pizza myself!! cheers mate