While I'm not quite as belligererant, I do have to agree that many people using bid bots is a symptom of the low quality stuff getting to trending page. I appreciate the idea of the bot, but I think this is something that should be looked at manually vs automated.

If quality content is upvoted with a bid bot, that's okay. Many times I spend 2-4 hours on a single blog post. To have that go on to make .12 is stupid. I sell those same blog posts for $100 to clients.

I think there will be a point where bid bots become obsolete (possibly with the communities update), but until then it's the best way for a creator like me, who spends hours creating and publishing high quality content, to get any sort of traction. Without a valid solution to them, I and many other high quality writers/content creators wouldn't be here.