The basic conclusion of this video was, every big account used a bot at one point in time, especially in the beginning, and a decent percentage of accounts, even those with more then 100,000 followers, still use bots to increase their likes and comments.
If we look at other big social media sites, there are bots. Reddit, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Quora, MySpace, it doesn't matter, bot's are relatively easy to code, and hard to get rid of.
Think about how easy it is to create a new Reddit account. 10 Seconds your done, not even an E-Mail address is required. Now copy the code of some Youtube tutorial of a 12 year old and you have your own Reddit bot up and running in 10 minutes.
_incapsula.com statistic of bot traffic vs human traffic - 2014_
## Bot's on Steemit
Because of the incredible large user base of the before mentioned sites (excluding MySpace) and their non transparency regarding user votes, it can be incredibly hard to differentiate between real users and bots. You want to know who up-voted a Reddit post? Well, if you don't have a snapshot of every user profile and a supercomputer at hand, it's not really possible to find that out.
On the other hand, here on Steemit you can see the biggest voters with a single click and although you won't get a detailed statistic of bought votes vs non-bought votes, you get a general idea on the usage of bots on that post.
_Marked red are the accounts I know of, that sell votes._
## Are bots a bad thing?
There is no definite answer on this question, but some points to consider:
1\. Bot's can help you to spread a message, that is worth spreading. If you have very few follower's, there is a high chance that you post will get buried in the abyss called the "new tab", if you don't make use of their services.
2\. Bot's can help getting new users with good content promoted, who otherwise would be overlooked.
3\. Bot's delude the real value of a post. Somebody with a lot of money can buy it's way to to frontpage, even with shitty content.
4\. As soon as upvote-bots are introduced to a platform, the real user has less power. Just check the current trending tab of Steemit and check which people actually used bots to get there.
## Personal opinion
IMO Steem has by far the best approach handling bots, **transparency**. Getting competently rid of bots is at the moment impossible and as long as that is the case, this is the best bet.
Even if someday we have some magic computer program that detects bot's 100% of the time with no false positives, I don't think removing them would add value to Steem. On Reddit, where you don't follow individuals, removing bots would significantly improve their content, since there is no bias for or against certain people. Here on Steemit, new users are required to "play the system" to get traffic on their post and most of the time bot's are the easiest and most efficient method.
But if by some chance, the Stemmit user base would come together and sharing the goal of removing upvote bots from the platform, I think we could do it. Something that is not possible of any other social media platform that I am aware of.
What is you opinion on this topic? Ever used bots here on Steemit or other platforms? Do you sell votes, if yes why? Really interested in those answers, so please leave a comment :)
~BloodViolet