Bots have always been controversial.
I have thought long and hard on the matter myself and just an not come to a conclusion.
There are two sides to the matter, one positive and one negative and the balance seems to be a fine line.
When Steemit began, bots helped with voting and with activity. Everyone can have their own bot and program it to vote for your those whom you want to support. For example; not everyone can be on Steemit all day, and so you are not there to vote for your friend´s blog. A bot can do that for you.
However, this was more understandable in the early days when you have only 24 hours to vote on a post. That was changed to 7 days on major hard fork.
Another way a bot is used; is to program it to vote on popular/trending posts. When you vote on a post that makes a lot of money then you get more money back from the curating. This practice, I have noticed has become more popular than ever. There is nothing wrong in this, indeed all can do it, but in one way it gives ever more votes to those who really do not need more votes.
I suppose this is the capitalist side of Steemit and until someone else comes up with a better way then it will continue.
For the argument against bots, it is generally a social one. Surely Steemit is meant for people, after all it is a social media blogging website.
Does a bot actually read any of the posts it votes on?
Why not just make a website based on a block chain for bots only?
However, we must remember that we are living in evolving times. I suppose we are all going to have to get used to living with artificial intelligence as part of our normal daily lives. However, that is still some way ahead as yet.
One day I asked myself this question:
Would I prefer 100 bots (that do not read my posts) to vote for me and earn $200 dollars,
or would I prefer 10 votes from real people who do read my posts and earn only $2 dollars?
As Steemit grows ever more new members, perhaps when it reaches 1 million we will decide to do away with bots altogether. However, I doubt that will happen. Especially with the new wave of "resteem" bots that have come out over the last few months.
For Steemit has come face to face with the problem facing everyone in social media and advertising today: In a world where everyone is shouting to be heard, how do we get people to listen to us?