Completely agree, been saying this for a while now. Bots do more for the community than they hurt. A lot of new users would have given up if it wasn't for some way of promoting their posts sustainable.

The site you created is a double-edged sword for me, I have always supported it due to the transparency, but it has made the entitlement complex on Steemit much worse. As you said, nowhere in advertising can you pay someone $100 and ask them to promote your product, have them promote it, then get all your money back, then expect even more money back instantly. The majority of Steemit see bots as cash machines and just churning out dribble to get an instant ROI and not building an audience or actively participating. This is not good for Steem and does a lot of hard to all of our investments of time and money.

I wrote about this a while ago in You are not entitled to an audience, you need to earn it. A lot of people believe just because they write content on Steemit, they deserve upvotes and to be paid.

Bots or no bots, this isn't how social media works. You have to earn your audience, sometimes good content isn't enough. A lot of times you got to bust your ass to get your name out there, network and provide tremendous value. You have to produce content that is so good that people want to pay you.