> which is also why I've missed out on a great number of multi-million dollar contracts in the past. 

No you haven't!


I totally agree on the advertisement spam in the comment section. That's the main reason why I gave up on most bots voting for me. It leaves a bad taste when looking at your full comment section and all you see are goats, robots and memes.

But I have a more positive opinion about bots in general. They level out the playing field. When you're small, what chance do you have to get a big time (or  let's say reasonable) upvote? Pretty much never, unless you work yourself up to a reputation of 70 or buy yourself into the system with 4 digits of cash. But with bots, you can go further than you could based on your level and always expand a little bit more than you would without them. That's a good thing as I believe. 

If bots weren't there the tribalism would still be there. Whales could still vote for each other as they do it extensively as well as for themselves as they also do extensively.

Bottom line: Bots are good, because they help small users more than they screw up the incentive structure of the platform.