Reading that placates my concerns a little. The bot API community's reported morale deflation after the NDA-sealed meeting mentioned in the Gist kind of trounces it though. I've got a sinking feeling that the ultimate vision for this applies to all bots, and it's only "bots used in 100+ servers" for now.

Time will tell, I hope I'm proven wrong. I hope that preemptively voicing my concerns helps keep the conversation going to make sure small bot authors aren't left in the dark.

The thing is, you're probably right. Over time they've been restricting items for bots in over 100 servers. Right now its to see the users in the server and also to see the statuses of these users.