I am actually not interested in the vote values.

The debate, on the contrary, is central to the future of steem. In general, these types of debates have always appeared in new social systems, they are bound to appear.

These are debates about how the system behaves when people are not doing what the creators of the system have hoped they would be doing, but are rather trying to "increase their utility".

I do not feel a need now to justify the use of bots. Do you think companies need to justify their use of ad-agencies to advertise their products ?

Have you ever seen a company wringing its (virtual) hands because they felt embarrassed that they advertised their products ? You haven't, right ?

On the other hand, I have already written a theoretical treatment of the topic of "advertising bots", you are welcome to comment it:

https://steempeak.com/steem/@sorin.cristescu/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-bid-bots

In short, bots offer a service which is potentially desirable to people from outside the steem system. Bots can add to the number of people who take the jump and decide to buy steem with fiat. And the steem ecosystem needs those people, as I explain in the above paper.