I've expressed myself many times on this topic, but it's not a black and white issue. What I don't like to see is people buying lots of votes on a post, especially if it's not that good. I can see some do it so they can appear on trending and thus gain followers, but you need hundreds of dollars to achieve that. Some of those people have a large following, so why do they need to keep on doing it?

I really don't know how much profit there is in doing this, but the big winners are those selling the votes as they get your money plus curation rewards. Some of them share it amongst those who delegate to them. I do delegate to one 'bot', but it's a small one that supports the running community.

As part of the @steemflagrewards team I do flag posts that over-use bots as they are depriving others of rewards. Not that my vote can make a huge difference. I even flag some trending posts that I think have too much rewards. I appreciate it's a business running these things, but we are meant to use our voting power as we see fit and the first reason on the popup is 'disagreement on rewards'.

We have a choice in how Steem goes on. Use your vote as you see fit.

I don't buy votes for specific posts, but I do use Steem Basic Income and I get votes from Helpie and Steem-UA for delegating to them. The money is nice, but I want real interaction too.