We put the smallest amount of down-vote in to the comments of those bots @inquiringtimes to clear the space for more room for dialogue. 

We recommend that upvote bots set an option to not have them auto-comment or a smaller comment box so it doesn't take up so much space. 

If our 1 cent flags are somehow harming the bots themselves, we'd be happy to upvote comments to offset the loss.

>the real reason people comment less when there are a lot of bot comments, is because if you have to pay so many bots for your content to be popular, then your content must not be very good.

This is very poor logic. Given that any content we have produced is met with a large positive reception, it is safe to say that the content we produce is good.

In fact, the only negative thing people can find about our content is that we use bots. I think that's a pretty solid argument that our content has some sort of quality associated with it.

>why does the author think it's so valueless they must pay 10 bots to vote for it, hmm it must not be good content, I won't engage.

Again, poor logic. One must ask how we got 800+ followers in a couple short weeks. Because we used bots, we gathered a sizable following quickly. That's decent engagement.

We aren't trying to reach people who act unconsciously and walk away from an article for reasons other than the content of the article itself. The people who would act on reflex to someone using bots are not thinking critically. It's much more beneficial to focus on attracting a following of conscious individuals who realize the use and downvoting of bots is a meaningless detail when compared to everything we are manifesting.

"I was going to walk into the mission and help feed starving people, but I would have had to step on the grass to do so."

>flagging your paid advertisers is like giving a spanking to people who helped you

If I paid money for a car, and the dealer slapped a big sticker on the windshield, I would take the sticker off. The dealership has my money, so me removing their ad from the product I bought has no bearing on the dealership.