I've heard the term before, but what exactly is a web of trust? 

 Don't show me any notes from people who none of my follows also follow

Since nobody will follow the bots they become invisible  

 Ah I see! Thanks for the clarification. I like that. 

 Unfortunately there are so many of them that someone in your network would have had to mute each one for that to work (unless you're going to set your wot threshold above 0, which is probably not that common) 

 Hmmm mute isn't as good a signal as a follow 🤔

If nobody I follow also follows a bot is what I'm thinking  

 Yeah, I mean if mute demotes. If not, then ignoring everyone with wot = 0 cuts out a lot of people you might otherwise want to hear from 

 Would there be a way to add a sat cost to receive a message? 

For example, a guy like Elon Musk might want to put a 10,000,000 sat requirement for private messages, 1,000,000 sats for tags, and a 10 sat cost to comment on his notes?

Would it be a viable?  

 I generally have my WoT set above 0, unless I am specifically looking to welcome new folks to Nostr. Does that mean I likely miss out on some people I may want to see? I am sure it does. But it also cuts out absolutely everything I don't want to see.

The trade-off is worth it for me most of the time. When it's not, changing the setting to 0 is pretty quick and easy. 

 I like the analogy. 

 1. How to access this mysterious web of trust?? (#nostrnewbs want to know!)

2. I just muted one of them in Damus …will see how many single shots I have to take to eliminate them all so to speak

3. As a complete side note, it’s interesting because in essence those bots could be deployed as a quasi DDOS attack on users themselves instead of “servers” (relays) 

 It's not easily solved though, I think that's what the 'reply attacker' is trying to point out.

I agree, muting Strings is not the solution.