Mate, this post deserves a lot more visibilty. You did a great job breaking it all down, and actually putting down solid evidience to back your initial thoughts.

While i enjoy the upvotes from bots, I do have to remind myself that most of these bots are being run for profit.. and the profits of their masters reign supreme to that of ours. I dont know if most of the bots operate like this, but from what i read your upvote is based on your bid relative to everyone else. So naturally, the more popular these bot systems become, the less valuable it is to those people using it :(