"WHY ARE THEY THE ONES WHO OWN ALL THE BID BOTS BATMAN!?"
Here's why:
37 whales own almost all the Steem that exists, because they mined it before Steemit existed.
Stinc and the witnesses serve their market, and their market is 37 whales, because those whales have the vast majority of Steem. The witnesses are elected by stake, and if they don't serve those whales, they won't be witnesses anymore.
So all the top witnesses are those most servile to mammon, by design. That's why many of them own or profit from bots.
You're pretty right about how this will turn out, as substituting advertising for the honest opinions of societal members will continue to degrade the society until it no longer has any value except as a mining scheme--and that only has value as long as there are people besides Stinc, the witnesses, and the miners posting and commenting.
Steemit has a ~10% YOY retention rate, meaning that about 90% of new users bail before a year is up. The reason they bail is that they observe that the rewards pool is being mined by those with the Steem, and they can't compete, because they don't have the Steem. They try to use botvotes to make up the difference, but sooner or later realize that just further concentrates the Steem in the accounts of those funding the bots, and not their account.
They bail.
Kill the social media by mining away the rewards that should be inuring to authors and attracting a wider market for Steem, kill the value of Steem.
Good luck. With a business plan like that, luck is all you have.
I can see where you are coming from to a degree. I personally would be making a decent profit if I was going for the profit and I'm not saying that I will not make a decent return eventually but I believe that this will turn out to be much more lucrative if I can reach my target audience in the long run. Most of the new users who leave expect to get something from nothing and feel heartbroken/butthurt that they don't write an article (well written or not) and voila! $1000 payout. They then turn to blame bidbots and those who use them because we realize that if you want to sell your product you must be willing to put something into your advertising or else you will be the only one who even knows that it is for sale. The very first thing I invested in when we (we are a team but this was my comment) joined this platform was delegations because if I want people to hear my voice you have to sometimes pay the cost to be the boss. I instantly noticed a difference when I began rewarding all meaningful comments on our posts. I feel that the witnesses who mined the steem earned it because I am a miner myself and have put forth thousands of dollars into my operations and I'll be honest, it was not for the good of mankind. I believe in Crypto but nothing is free and if I invest $100, you'd best believe that I will be getting $200 back but mining Crypto is almost like literally "printing my own money". I believe that the majority of the people who whine about bidbot usage arrived at this platform and seen the high payouts but never intended to invest ANYTHING into promoting themselves and while they spend all their time crying and hoping that a whale will notice them and give them an upvote, others are busy getting paid. The whales will eventually power down and drop the price of steem inwhich time I will gladly come and grab all that I can afford. Think about how the crash affected the price of steem and sbd since Dec.. We seen sbd go from $9/each down to $2 each but how many people invested? I wouldn't know because I was too busy grabbing everything I could like it was a clearance sale and when whales power down I will rinse and repeat. Anytime that we are dealing with a currency be it fiat or Crypto we are dealing with business and unless the business is a soup kitchen, I don't expect for anything to be free and neither should anyone else.
(This is only my opinion but "have-nots" will always disagree with the "haves" and waste valuable time arguing which could/should be spent getting their own)