You're correct in that having content that's appealing to human people is the best and the primary way in which one can grow. The issue is when you first get started these little boosts are nice. You also have to look at the bots you're using. For example, the main bot I use currently is Hive account@bumper, this "bot" actually has people behind the scenese manually making sure the posts are not plagiarized and that they are "quality."