In the beginning I did swear not to use bots. But I did :(
The problems with bots is, besides the fact that most of them does cost you SP, that they do give a false feeling of appreciation and can be addictive.
By giving your posts a little boost, the value of course increases, hoping that more people will notice the post. But there are always other who do invest more into the bots, than you did. So the point of getting noticed by using bots, is for the most of us just useless.
After I did stop using the bots, the value of my posts dropped a lot. But at least it shows not the real appreciation of the Steem ecosystem!
The positive sides of using good established bots, is that it is one of the fastest way the grow in reputation! I always thought that reputation was valuable and that it couldn't be bougth, But I was wrong. Even reputation can be bougth at the Steem ecosystem.