I personally buy upvotes, but it's absolutely a double edged sword, especially if it's bots. If the value of the content disappears, so does the steem value. Luckily atleast some of the bot owners do run some checkups and remove their upvote if the post is garbage. I do believe these problems will even themselves out, because the ones standing to lose the most are the bot owners and the whales.
And that is exactly the kind of initiative they need to take, but it has to be all of them. So that they are incentive to improvement and not the opposite, I'm glad to know some bot owners are on the ball. I saw at least 3 posts that were copy pastes just this week with 50+ payouts... It can breaks one spirit you know..... Thanks for your input brother
People are very eager to protect their investment, so I believe it will be fixed. I think it's just a matter of riding out the storm.