Personally I don't think anything about Steemit is passive, at least not for the average user.

I question whether bots are good or bad. I like automation, I like passive income but at the same time it seems like the only people who really benefit from this are super techy people who know how to build bots or people who spend a lot of time studying Steemit and what bots are more effective.

Since I don't fall into either category my view is probably a little bias admittedly, however I personally would rather see people spending time engaging with one another and creating quality content as opposed to figuring out how to best game the system.