The bots themselves arent the problem its the way they are being used and abused to shortcut hard work. We all know that cut/paste articles/short meaningless articles arent worth hundreds of dollars. Unfortunaly makes it very hard for minnows who actually spend time writing good content to get any recongition.
In terms of ROI on bots I have just finished an experiment where I found they arent all they are cracked up to be (atleast for a minnow like me with a small SBD budget!):
https://steemit.com/steemit/@conradt/the-great-bid-bot-experiment-final-results
It seems the more you spend the more you get in terms of visibility.
Steemit is no different from other platforms. The more money you spend the better visibility your posts will get. This also includes trash that mostly appears on the trending pages - by now it has become a hallmark of Steemit.
I am starting to find these days there are more and more Steem 'advertisements' and 'news' on tredning from witnesses etc or people building new apps on the blockchain which is a god thing otherwise I wouldnt know about these.
But yes people can also just post trash and boost it to trending - maybe there needs to be some criteria around using bid bots