At the same time, however, I hope that Splinterlands' policy on bots will change and that bots will finally be fought and eliminated because any marketing campaign about a bots-friendly game will fail.
There is no such thing as a successful game that tolerates bots and it should start from this point otherwise I will keep getting the same and recurring response when I try to promote Splinterlands outside of Hive: why do I have to play in a game full of bots?

That is exactly what we have been doing. Modern format - the main format of the game and where new players will participate - has had bots banned for a while, and more recently the pass required to play in Wild has helped eliminate a significant portion of the bots from there.