"This is just a crypto/social media experiment anyway so it's hard to say exactly what makes good content." .. seems like a cop out to me, but admittedly I havent followed your argument against bots before.

The monetary aspect of Steemit dominates all other aspects and only "players" with enough skin in the game ie investment can play the bots effectively. No one ever said it has to be equitable or "socialist", but any idea that content matters becomes a joke when any trending post only gathers steem, hehe, when the blogger plays the bots to get attention. The idea that the content of the post matters becomes a joke, that's the main problem with it imho. You say that its hard to define good content, well take the bots away and see what floats to the top .. the payouts would be much less fersure, but the content would be the driving force .. don;t you think?