If everyone loses money on the bid-bots then they are indeed for advertising purposes. A few months ago people were pulling in hundreds of free dollars with them. Many that are screaming, bid-bot bad, are the ones who gained those retarded votes back in the day.
It is also not the masses taking advantage of the bid-bots. There are more raping the pool with self-voting and circle voting but that seems to be okay. In all honesty, how are anyone but the large self-voters or circle voters supposed to get to trending? That is why until repeat voting loses value and self-votes are gone bid-bots are a true community service as they are, they give an equal fighting chance.
If people want to combat the bid-bots they should empower more users with their large votes in place of self-voting.
If you listen closly it is all just a bunch of what benefits the select users the most. Followed by things like trust, morals and ethics to push their agendas. Sadly Steemit is more like American politics than FB, Twitter amd reddit combined.
I have picked up on the circle voters and it is rife. It is very political I agree. People are scared of upsetting people in case they wont get a vote. That is not healthy.
It is always a motivating factor for me to research the chain when people start throwing around words like ethics, morals, communities, and scam. It always leads to a good set of data and normally the opposite of what they are trying to preach.
They always talk like the blockchain isn't there or they feel people are to lazy to look for themselves.