For every bot that helps, I see 50 that are disgusting. Has steemit thought about banning bots entirely?
I joined in July/2016, and the topic of banning bots has been raised repeatedly for the entire time that I've been here. As I understand it, banning bots is impossible, or nearly so. Humans can interact with the block chain at the command line level without using the web site interface, so there's no way to distinguish between a human at a keyboard or programmatic command entry.
Decentralized recaptcha has been suggested, but I don't think the capability exists now, and I sort-of doubt if it's even feasible. Personally, I think that in the long run the good that bots do will outweigh the bad. After-all, things like "Google" and "Facebook" are nothing more than gargantuan Internet bots. Banning bots would just make it harder for entities like that to emerge in the Steem ecosystem.
It seems like flagging should cost a little money, to reduce those flags to only the most important ones.
As @whatsup notes below, flagging is already discouraged by the incentive system. Downvotes reduce voting power at the same rate as upvotes, but they pay 0 curation rewards.
My big problem with these particular accounts wasn't that they were flagging, but that they were doing it mostly with Steem Power that was delegated by Steemit, Inc.
It is hard, but I still think there should be a balance. If you downvote but never upvote, it should push your value down. You are right, steem does hand you a functional package. They are just using that gift on the dark side.
Small people, but there should be some kind of censure, for this poor use.