Thank you for this informative article! I haven't read anything about up-vote bots before, but I've noticed that plenty of people use them on Steemit. I'm not really sure if I like them or not. As you mentioned, some people write great articles, but those posts get easily unnoticed if the author doesn't use an up-vote bot, since there are some many people who do. Then those posts gain popularity and rewards, even if the content isn't that great.

Anyhow, I've felt the bots are such a complicated thing, but this article explained a lot to me. :)