Interesting aspects. I have not dealt with steemit for quite some time now. recently I wrote something about upcoming ICOs in February and it took me quite some time (It is not a very good article but the research was time intensive). I Earned only the likes of people I know so I was quite disappointed. I thought to myself why not boosting it a little bit (I did use two bots on that post and felt a little shady... but if you not overdo it to me it seems alright). Back to your post - in case it is a winwin why not using bots. One issue is for sure that the bots gain more and more power which leads to a (even more) unbalanced system. Furthermore a problem I see is (I have a good friend running a well-known bot) people are transferring more money than they can earn in many cases! Sure it is their own responsibility to check the bots status but because I know that each round the bot gets more than it can pay - not good. all bots should pay the transfers back in that case. Pump coins will always be the case doesn't matter what you try to blacklist... youtubers getting payed... adds and so on and so forth so this again is something each Investor is responsible of doing his/her research.
I am glad to still see you here very active!