RE: To Bid Bot Or Not To Bid Bot, That Is The Question

It isn't literally burnt. I'm not sure if @theycallmedan was somewhat confused about this or using the term lossly, since the it was "burned" from the perspective of the poster doing the promotion in the sense that they don't get it back from the reward pool.

It was indeed not burned, however, and got paid out to the bid bot operators and delegators. That is a transfer that benefits those specific parties and doesn't directly benefit Steem and Steem stakeholders in any way (other than the tiny benefit that Steem gets from being the platform used for the transactions, which is something just not very much), but at least they aren't taking rewards for that, so arguably it is somewhat neutral.

If someone did an actual burn (sending to null) then it is doing more to contribute to increasing the value of Steem and more worthy of broad support from Steem stakeholders/voters/curators, all else being equal (and by the latter I mean not harmful to Steem in some other way such as scams damaging the brand).