I have seen at least 10 of these bots around. Apart from the Almighty and popular bot Wang, of which i believe was created by Steemit somehow, and a few other bots who ensure the good running of Steemit, how is it legal for everyone to be able to create bots. I understand eventually Steemit will regulate that, but sometimes it makes responses to your post very in-genuine. How is it possible for someone to read 2 pages of an article in 2 seconds and comment, "Keep up the good work"? Even Howard Berg, the World's Fastest Reader won't be able to do that on his best day so what's up with all these bots ruining Steemit?
I blurred the name of this person among others just to kind of protect him/her if you're truly indeed a real person but please if you really are, please stop and curate accurately. Wow just realized curate and accurately actually kind of rhyme together :D Anyway...
Unless these bots were officially created by Steemit, of which i don't think so, i don't think it should be allowed for anyone to create a bot and use it, otherwise Steemit will be like an artificial place full of fake bots impressing fake responses instead of a genuine community that honestly and accurately curate content. I would love to see a stop to this if possible. If any of the decision makers of Steemit is reading this, please consider regulating this or even better, ban it in some way or the other. An example will be anyone who uses bots, looses some kind of privilege. Something to put a halt to that. Steemit is a great community and i don't want to see it ruined with these bots flying around except the bots set out by the Steemit team to regulate Steemit and keep it a very welcoming environment. For example, i heard on a blocktalk interview by Dan and Ned that there's a downvote bot that downvotes double posts and other false content. That is a good use case for a bot and not trying to make more money.
If you see any of these bots and you realize it's not for a good use or used for selfish gains, downvote/flag them to discourage that on Steemit. We all want to see a community full of great humans with beautiful stories and knowledge and not a bot nation.
I won't be surprised if these bots start attacking me right when i post this. Shaking my head.
UPDATE 1: Just when i posted this (within 2 seconds, I'm sorry to point out the name this time, but this same person/bot posted again. I'm glad the community is responding positively and downvoting/flagging these bots. As evidenced by someone who just downvoted and flagged him/her/it lol. To whoever did that. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. We really want to see Steemit as a pleasant place.)
UPDATE 2: I feel Steemit should make good use of the introduce yourself posts and have a verified icon of some sort on each individual/user to make more transparent the difference between a bot and a user. So that as soon as we see them, we flag/downvote them. And there should be some kind of punishment for people who are downvoted consistently. These are my thoughts on starting to trying to find a fix for this chaos.