Hard to say the degree in which this will happen. Even a small nudge can easily change the balance in who delegates, who snipes curation, and who bids. The data may point to total dominance in earnings now, but it also obscures key points including the returns to delegators. It's also at the extreme of what the current incentives pushed forward. And of course it will not reflect what happens with downvotes.
I disagree with your assessment that downvotes won't happen against bot voting, because it's clear that it will. The curve assists here as well because it is more efficient in an impact/rshare to downvote larger posts, and that is where it will be directed. It is admittedly the largest unknown in this mix of changes, as well as the most critical part, but any increase in downvoting behavior will already affect things for the better.
One thing also to point out is that all bot voting essentially needs to go big or go home. Low to Medium size bot bids (in aggregate across bots) will simply disappear. Increases the risk as well as the reward. I don't have the numbers here but it's hard to say how many will continue with it.
There is a danger here as you say. If downvotes don't happen, this behavior could crowd out everything else, although the convergent linear caps the degree in which this can actually happen. I would say that it's also an incentive to downvote the other posts that are now crowding you out, if you are one of those bidders. (Or a bot owner that wants to make it more attractive).
Interestingly, I was treating the system as one big bid bot but the reality is also that they can no longer promise guaranteed returns, and revert back to models where they just do raw bid pricing instead of their min/max ROI parameters. Which can get very weird. There's quite a lot that bot owners will need to do behind the scenes to make sense of this environment, that I even think some may simply just drop out. In which case it may just be a handful of competing large bots at the end.
The smaller authors and commenters will see an immediate impact as you say, though I don't think it goes below dust. You can see in the parameter they chose that it's at worst halving the amounts. And I believe that after all the incentives shift, it will reflect a better distribution overall, which is conditional on the above, which we disagree on. Because as you say, the lion's share is dominated by bots. If you manage to chip away the incentives, you can slowly unravel it to a degree.
Anyway, what you are saying highlights a situation that I admit is a possibility, but I suppose I have a better feeling about the downvote behavior and incentive structure than you do.
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WE had DOWNVOTING Communities before but what did it changed ... ah YEAH NOTHINGG, only a few get holded for a moment... but shitty posts are all around STILL and they still get paid for it... so this THEORY isnt worthy... i understand the HOPING of this CHANGINGS , but all i can see is, the SOLD VOTE will be more worthy than before because the payout get doubled, and they CREATOR will get LESS... so where is the MAGIC... what will it drives into a better thing ... i cant see it
Your reasoning doesn't follow. 25% Free downvotes is a big difference compared to what we had before.
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okay then i really missreaded this downvote way... but at the end we will see what it will change... because when i use it, we will see in what kind of war its maybe end...