You do hurt the rest of the community by taking from the votes they get by hiring a bully to take rewards for you.
If the bidbots were just about advertising they would require that rewards be declined, and lower vote cost to what they wouldve gotten from curation.
This makes trending even more available to those that want to buy some visibility, and ends any impact on the rest of us.
But they dont, because they are bullies that take their profit no matter the cost to anybody else.
Any rewards not voted to you by the community violate the intent of the coin to reward 'good' content and to add value to the blockchain by being a source of crowdsourced curated 'good' content.
If you want to advertise get out and be social, word of mouth is all the ads a great product needs.
Good point, I do enjoy the social part of steemit as well.
thx for your input