But can't we downvote, ignore, mute, unfollow and report as spam to proactively deal with this issue?

I'm new to Steem and made my #introduceyourself only a few hours ago as my first post. Was surprised to see a few people commenting, following and request that I follow and upvote them back. Have a look at their profiles and it's a mish-mash of spam, apparent botnetting and other such dubious practices.

As i'm so new, i'd love to see a guide as to how we can all proactively quash such practices using whatever processes we have at our disposal on this platform.