The problem of current curation reward system is no association with engagement and therefore vulnerable to bots. Why do bots matter? Because bots cannot analyze, rate, or filter content by its quality. For instance, if I ask you about your upvotes on posts, you maybe able to tell me reasons why you value them, and your curation created value. If I ask the same question to bots, they cannot answer why the posts are good.
If we want to keep curation rewards, we need to integrate user engagement to it, as I suggested in my post. If not, I agree that curation reward is doing more harm than good.
This:
Is factually incorrect. There's an entire Internet search and advertising industry that has emerged in the last 20 years by doing exactly that. Steem bots may not do it very well, yet, but after some development time, they will. Bots are just a continually improving approximation for their operators' own preferences.
Their operators can.