Except for the grumpycat incident, I have yet to have a single person come up to me and say they were flagged for using a bot in over 6 months and ~1000 votes/day.
People getting flagged are generally posting low effort, spam, stolen content or in some sort of feud.
All the same, it leaves a very negative impression on newbies, and I'm still a newbie here.
"Newbies" typically have a lot of impressions, not all of them are accurate.
I'd rather be safe rather than sorry, what with all this talk about how terrible BernieSanders and Grumpycat are, among others here and there, I don't want to risk my presence on here. Granted I'm not solely here for the money, but it is nice.