Do you realize that for Steem Users who have large stakes, flagging posts are expensive and you don't get any sort of flag curation (yet)
So to flag this post down to $0 from $1000 or so would cost exactly that much in lost potential upvote money. Who wants to pay that much just to negate his paid advertisement?
And why is it fair for these bid bots to just take someones money and then take the vote away and even sometimes take the money just because they don't like the post? I must agree with those in here who are bringing up the idea of asking Who are We to decide what is and isn't worthy of being a Paid trenbding post. The more I see trending the happier I am it is going to be Trashed soon when Communities comes out :D It will be great when bid bot owners have so much less influence, They hardly contribute to Manuel curation and if they did then steem would be so much better, instead its trash and soon communities will change that! Ned is right, steemits trending page has failed and its going to be SO much better with communities!
Flagging isn't expensive in the same way that upvoting content costs nothing. Flagging is a missed opportunity to use your voting power to earn something rather than to penalise something.
You're right that there are no rules about what is on the trending page and what can be upvoted by paid voting services. But if a product is being sold by a charlatan, has no scientific basis for the claims about its benefits and hasn't even been proven to be safe for consumption, then I greatly doubt anyone is going to be worried if the votes were pulled and flags were dished out at will.
I also hope that communities will help address the current problems we have with paid votes and the trending page. This type of shit doesn't need the type of exposure it's receiving here.