I came up with this idea recently to use the @Steemit account to sell votes 'officially', in a way that makes other bot owners hugely lose out and such that the funds received can be used in a way that benefits Steem directly.
Some have said that using those tokens would dilute the rewards distribution too much - but I don't know that for sure.

The Steemit terms and conditions actually ban the use of bid bots, but that doesn't seem to have ever been enforced.

Improved discovery and curation is most likely the best solution - but since the speed of fixes and upgrades here is so agonisingly slow... I don't expect that to solve anything in the near future.

I have stopped using bid bots except in cases where I really want the information in the post to be seen by many, such as the recent post I made about organ harvesting in China.