This means that SBD are a vector for distributing wealth to content creators, which tend to be not whales.

Yep, this was one of the first points that I heard that made me take notice of the issue. However since taking notice it's occurred to me that this also incentivizes self voting and scam bots by the same stroke. @remlaps has observed some data which suggests that people are self voting more since the price hike.

Will votebots continue to thrive even though it costs so much more to buy votes in SBD now?

Yes, it seems that paying for anything is made difficult by the price volatility, so if the price continues to be unstable, rather than if it continues to be high, then it will put a dent in vote buying. Again, I presume people are seeing a better return in self voting and cashing out SBD, so maybe paying for SP delegation and then self voting is the cynics way forward, if you can get SP delegation at a reasonable rate.