I generally find them to be a necessary evil. That's the number one thing I found about Steemit. If you just think you can post content without knowing the right people, then you sink. I would have loved to do away with all the bots and self voting, just write and reap rewards, but it's not easy. It's not just about the rewards, but also about increasing the visibility of your content with other people.
The problem as I see it is on the long term. After all, the value of the cryptocurrency is all based on how much value people are willing to give it and stuff like this will turn away from taking time with their content, or even leave the platform together.