I use several upvoters, to help my blog have a more consistent return - and returns more of my SBD into SP. I have found that I actually get more overall votes when I do this - or it's just coincidence, I don't know.

Bidbots seem a lot riskier - though I guess some people have worked it out. It does seem weird that we can get spammed by these guys in our wallets all for them giving me 0.001 SBD at a time.

But yes, there are many who abuse these things. (Just like the people who do last-minute, huge, self-upvotes.)

How to police it? I'm really not sure. Not without making Steemit a very unpleasant place to be for everyone.

I think the problem is, that if you do something to stop people having bad posts upvoted by bidbots, you end up having to have everyone's posts go through some sort of criteria in order to post - since private bidbots often don't care.

Some plagiarists and similar con artists who get found out by steemflagrewards find that their bids are overturned by the owner of the bots when they discover what the con artist is doing.

Perhaps that's all we can do to combat this problem... The good guys work together to make Steemit a nicer, safer place to be, but the bad guys will always be out there trying to make a quick buck off the backs of others...