bots are controlled by people, the crowd is probably korean or chineese, they have been advancing their aims for quite the while, personally I don't mind and it's not much different in comparison to other crowds, lots of people use autosteem to maximise curation rewards, some even game them :)

it's been going on for a year at least, bots are 50/50 here, some are good some are bad, mostly it's overused leading to abuse.