Thanks, @revisesociology! I was offline for a couple of days, so it wasn't all about preparing this post ;)
Your take-away is correct. I agree, that auto-voting isn't bad per-se. I use it as well and I don't see a general problem with it. I think we all knew before that a good fraction of votes is automated, seeing some numbers gives a bit more of a feeling on the orders of magnitude.

Also aren't smartsteem and minnowbooster basically 'bid-bots' too, essentially?

I'm not sure I fully understand. Direct votes from these accounts are included in the bid-bot/paid votes column. What was unknown before is the number and value of votes that were cast via private accounts using those two vote-selling proxies.