How about a sticky post in the speculation section warning about the bots?

[thejaytiesto]

You know, all those bots with the generic nicknames like KG52Hfj3 or something, which posts all those generic FUD threads that are always the same.
If there is a sticky warning about those bots, people will hopefully stop replying and reporting them instead.

[mprep]

First, that's giving exposure to the spammer - not something we want to be doing. Second, those threads get reported and deleted rather quickly. Lastly, it doesn't matter if people respond or not - once that thread is found by the moderation team, it (and it's owner) get wiped ("nuke" banned).

[Lauda]

You know, the primary people that don't recognize these bots are spammers. I've seen some of them reply to several of those posts (which tend to be different in content with randomized titles about Bitcoin dying), leading to the conclusion that they are generally unaware of these things even though they 'spend a lot of time' in that section (obviously not for the right reasons). I don't think that this is necessary either as the number of bots there has severely reduced due to the addition of 2 Captcha at registration. In addition to that, we have our own bot that helps kill off some of the spam.
That said, I do remember a time prior to the addition of re-captcha, where the situation was so bad that I had to put the Speculation section on 5-10s refresh timer.

[Foxpup]

You know, the primary people that don't recognize these bots are spammers. I've seen some of them reply to several of those posts (which tend to be different in content with randomized titles about Bitcoin dying), leading to the conclusion that they are generally unaware of these things even though they 'spend a lot of time' in that section (obviously not for the right reasons).

Don't recognise or don't care? I've said it before and I'll say it again: sig spammers either can't or won't read what they're replying to. At all. I've even seen them reply to those word-salad diet pill ads. It's beyond ridiculous.

[Relnarien]

You know, the primary people that don't recognize these bots are spammers. I've seen some of them reply to several of those posts (which tend to be different in content with randomized titles about Bitcoin dying), leading to the conclusion that they are generally unaware of these things even though they 'spend a lot of time' in that section (obviously not for the right reasons).

Don't recognise or don't care? I've said it before and I'll say it again: sig spammers either can't or won't read what they're replying to. At all. I've even seen them reply to those word-salad diet pill ads. It's beyond ridiculous.

And that actually helps the moderation team a bit (a very little bit). See, a spambot's account and threads will always get deleted. ALWAYS. But before that happens, if any of those sig spammers who are using bots themselves or are just plain stupid happen to post on those spam threads, then they can also get marked and monitored by the mods afterwards. You can look at it as an unexpected upside to a very serious problem.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I think most folks know not to reply to them, but I'm not sure a sticky would be appropriate.  FUD in itself isn't banned, and it's hard to tell sometimes if it's the bot or not. 

Why do people do this shit?  It's bizarre to me.

[EFS]

I find them talking to spambots is funny actually.