So in a nutshell, this whole damn app is a fraud, & shameful as hell. You can even tell on this forum itself when a bot is answering. But here's my story:
A few years back, I decided to try this subscription nonsense where I was supposedly going to learn how to get better at Chess! The INSTANT I signed up, any player, regardless of their rating was able to beat me as easily as a grandmaster would! That had never happened before. I was used to beating Blitz players 1900-2000 without any kind of issues whatsoever. I now found myself losing even to sub 1800 players, which had NEVER HAPPENED UNTIL I SIGNED UP! It got to the point where I got so pissed I ditched that account & opened a new one.
As though miraculously the problem went away! I was back to a normal Blitz rating easily above 1900, most often 2000 range. But then, a few years passed, & I noticed again that whenever I'd drop down into the 1800 range, it's a though the players there were tougher than those above the 2000+ range!! This has been happening consistently for about 3 yrs now. 1700 players in Blitz play stronger than 2000+ rated accounts. I truly despise this app. I can tell it's not even ppl cheating, but simply some damn Ai posing as normal accounts.
it just something, does not mean they are bots. 1700s are the toughest but 2200s are easier sometimes (bullet) and in blitz i can not even get past 1725, i got 1725 many times but almost never got 50 more points. rating does not measure skill compared to you, it measures average skill compared to everyone, it depends in your playing type (agressive, defensive, pawn pusher or something)
The reason people disable chat is that it's 99.9% people hurling abuse. Which is real shame because a decent post mortem is such an enjoyable element of the game... If I refuse a rematch, it's because I'm too disgusted with my own play or that I simply wanted/had time to play one game...
But regarding BOTS: A while back, I tried switching to rapid, and the amount of bots and cheaters was mind boggling. (This is not just me being a sore loser, it's a fact evidenced by the many, many rating adjustment messages in my inbox).
Do I think chess.com made those? Not at all, it's just people cheating for some stupid reason or other. But rapid is less popular to begin with, and it'll be real hard to build a solid base of real players when there are so many obvious cheaters around to drive them away. It's a sad state, but there's no easy fix.