Buying a botvote is marketed as profitable. It's essentially leasing the SP to self vote a phat bank.
Upvoting posts and comments requires no financial incentive, and the biggest social media platforms prove it. While we can opine to our heart's content about the quality of content on those other media, the truth is that folks actually curate on those platforms, while on Steem the financial incentive reduces actual curative upvoting, and encourages profiteering.
I have been of the opinion that HF21 will make that worse. I am surprised by the coordinated assault on bidbots the community has undertaken. I hope it lasts, and that I have been proved wrong about retaliation.
We'll see.