Thanks for raising the point... I agree 100%!

Which is why I'm advocating we, the smaller fish, only to target the real/new spammers. Almost every, no... I lie... every one of the guys engaging in comment spam on my posts so far have been "relatively new" bots.

a) They won't have much rep/SP yet (thus being unable to harm you in return).
b) Chances are the bot's owner will only pick up the problem after a whole lot of damage has been done, (hopefully) causing them to abandon the bot rather than trying to retaliate.

By tackling these new spammers (and leaving the bigger tasks to the @steemcleaners et al of the community), we can hopefully prevent them from becoming dolphins and thus untouchable by the majority of smaller legit Steemians.

... well that's my theory anyway. ;-)