People oversimplify the issue.

The question is not "bots or not bots." The question is "what are you doing?"

In particular, because of the near criminally under-featured nature of Steemit as a social media platform, bots are almost a necessity to function within the context of its operations. I literally would not have stayed on this platform without Ginabot, which does a basic set of functions that you should expect a social network to do for itself. Mentions, keyword tracking, and notifications.

Ginabot is a bot.

But then we have automated voting trains and content harvesters and auto-reply systems and general spammers and mutual voting circles and all of the other horrible things which make living on the steem blockchain a generally miserable existence for a creator. All of the things that subvert the stated intent of Steemit as a platform (albeit exactly in line with the mechanisms of reward as designed).

We really need to start focusing on software behaviors that have negative repercussions of one sort or another, and be willing to talk about the trade-offs that come along with those activities – but that's not how discussion happens here. Either it's a crusade or everything is hunky-dory; there's no room for anything in between.

Given that Toys-R-Us has just declared bankruptcy, and a well-earned one at that, your illustration is both amusing and pointed.

We can actually have quite deep interactions with data and users in an automated way. In a real sense, that's exactly what Communities are; software constructs which provide content direction for a self-selected group of individuals. But that's a useful function, and one that is directly connected to the nature of the content in question.

A lot of the system as it stands is orthogonal to the issue of content. That's a real problem. It provides a lot of opportunity for analysis and observation of human behavior in a very synthetic environment, but as the basis for a social network which incentivizes behaviors which are prosocial, it's a real issue.

But now I'm reminded of all the Geoffrey the Giraffe fursuits out there just waiting to be repurposed by furry cosplayers and I'm kind of excited.