I love how the redditors are relying on human-generated content for safety rather than their own critical analysis. "NO NO NO THE BOTS ARE BAD ITS GOING TO DESTROY EVERYTHING IT NEEDS TO BE BANNED". The person (or program) responsible for generating the content is irrelevant. The nature of the content and what it represents is what's important, and this is where a persons ability to be thinking and critical comes into play.
Take imageboards for example. No one has an identity. When you read a post, you judge the post. You don't go looking through an accounts history to find some stupid shit they said 40 posts ago. You don't look at an internet point score to determine whether the post deserves a reply or not. You don't let a profile picture or a name subconsciously influence your judgement. You don't look at a join date and hope that its less than a few months old, so you can use the newfag insult as an argument. Whether a male, female, white person, black person, 40 year old, 18 year old, or a bot made the post doesn't matter.
The bots could very well be used for more aggressive spamming, creating noise in the form of irrelevant posts, and shilling products, but these can all be mitigated effectively with different means, and it ultimately falls back on the individual to think critically. The problems people complain bots will bring forth are already present on the platform, and many are victims of it already.
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