Bid bots are self-voting by the sellers (i.e. sellers earn about what they would earn if they posted a comment and voted for it with their own stake). The buyers mostly break even. It games the placement Trending algorithm, which is supposed to ranks highly rewarded content. However, with paid votes being close to break even, it doesn't really do that, it ranks content with a high placement spend. It is actually debatable whether this is bad though. Being willing to spend money for placement is a perfectly valid economic activity (advertising).
Taken to its extreme (all stake delegated to bid bots), it replaces the idea of a reward pool with a paid-placement blogging site. The native token is used for payment, bandwidth, and some staking purposes. I don't know if that is actually 'bad', just different. It could probably be implemented more efficiently (for example by getting rid of the largely-neutered reward pool concept).
I agree on that perspective. I think like all discussions, there really needs to be an anchor so we know we're talking about more or less the same thing, which is in this case, to improve Steem via its social media front. It seems like you've given up on the idea..
'Social media' doesn't inherently mean rewarding with money. The most successful sites reward virtually none of their users, although a small portion of superstars do earn money. Furthermore most of them, if not all, do have paid placement of some kind.
So, no, I wouldn't say I have given up on the premise of Steem having a social media front that adds value. But I'm largely unconvinced there is a viable model for voting to give away money in a manner that actually helps make it more social or compelling. Apart from the voting dynamics problem, it isn't even clear that the money helps on 'social' aspect as opposed to hurting. Mostly it seems to make people behave more obnoxiously and less genuinely social in order to try to get more money. I could be wrong, but that's how I see it so far.