Bots are experts in maximizing curation rewards by time adjust and most probably(*) work on author/elapsed time selection plus some social proof of quality - but not content. There are a few exceptions, like gentlebot, but not enough in my opinion.

(*)this is a huge guess based in what I see, since I can't check the algoritms

I belive without real content driven curation steemit won't succeed. I belive it because without it new users won't see the plataform as fair neither find good content easly. A lot of posts about this subject are comming to the surface and I can't see a solution in the near future, so that's why I am less confident about the future of steemit.

Hopefully I am wrong and/or the community will find a way to fix it.