Much has been said on this topic. Here’s my ignorant rant for it.
BROKEN UI
“The trending page sucks, it’s full of trash/paid-for content.” This isn’t untrue. Compare it to Reddit and you’ll see how bad it is. Even aside from the paid-for nature of the posts, they remain, ahem, dull. Derivative is another word I’d use.
But bidbots have gotten a lot of hate for this. It’s not their fault. Really, it’s the shitty writing of the people abusing bots. More than this, the fault lies with Steemit itself. Bots, trending-trash, sycophants, all these reach their worst logical outcome because Steemit as a UI is broken.
Yes, the upcoming ‘communities’ update should fix this. But, maybe it won’t. Until then we have a tag system that buries any new content. The ability to use bidbots is one of only a few methods to get your post above the river of spam.
UPVOTES
The payout system, using upvotes, presupposes that people will upvote ‘quality’ posts.
The fault with this notion, at least according to steemwhales.com, is that 2% of accounts own 95% of the value on the blockchain. Even if people upvote, the vast majority of those upvotes are worthless. You might get more ‘coverage’ or ‘promotion’ or ‘publicity’. You can't use publicity to pay your rent or buy dog food. I don’t need coverage. I need to be paid for the labor I put into the work. I need to be paid for the value I put into the blockchain. The expectation that people should work for free is bullshit. You know who does benefit from that labor? The top 2%, whose shares of Steemit gain value from the use of the blockchain.
The vast majority of upvotes have no value to them. Don't get me wrong, I certainly appreciate them. But at the end of the day, we all have to rely on the 'kindness' of accounts with weight to them. This creates an awkward relationship. I'm not a fan of sucking up. I'd rather be paid for my labor. But Steemit's ecosystem resembles less a vibrant economy and more a failed state.
Shit posts drain rewards and spam out visibility. But guess who benefits either way, quality post or not, from the use of Steemit? That’s right. That top 2%.
COMPETITION? BETWEEN WHO?
The only ones competition are the accounts without value. The accounts with enough value to them can buy their way to the trending page. There’s no reason why their posts should have ‘quality’ to them because they can just buy more upvotes for their own blog. And sycophants jump on and upvote things, hot bag of shit or not, because
NOBODY READS
The number one fault with Steemit is that nobody actually reads anything. Few will actually read this post. I just need a catchy image and a proper title and an optimum post time. Yet another reason why a writer needs to use a bidbot. I don’t write trash stories. I write semi-decent stories. I know this. I know I don’t suck. I’m not amazing. But I’m not shit, either. Still, nobody actually reads things. I’d guess about 1% of the people on steemit give a shit about reading fiction.
So 1% of the user base is cool with me. I can expect 1% of the user base to shoot me an upvote once in awhile. So sorry, Steemit. Until this changes, you bet your ass I’ll use an upvote system to, at the very least, pay myself first and foremost for my own work.
Using bots will at least give me about 90% return. I might put 10 SBD in and get about 8SBD+2SP back. If I’m lucky. Or close enough to that. I’ve done the math and I’m still breaking even on the bidbots. A little less here, a little more there. So actually, I encourage all writers to experiment with it. Idk, maybe you wont always get 100% return, but the point is: you should be getting value for your work. If you aren’t getting paid for making quality, then someone else is. Pay the fucking writer. It's not my fault the system is broken. I'm just trying to add quality to it. So don't blame me.
Complaining about bidbots misses the point. We need actual people to read. We need actual competition between quality writers (I’m hoping communities fixes this), we need a proper UI that promotes functional competition and visibility. We need less sycophants. Complaining shines light on faults. That’s how you fix them. So I laugh when people cry about 
Steemit could be great. Currently, it’s stuck between ‘almost great’ and ‘a nightmare of what a world based solely on profit looks like. An army of droids, some human, some computer software, and yet their replies and level of interaction they bring is the same’.
Is Steemit a way to finally reward content producers through the beauty of the internet? Or is this just a place where the lowest common denominator wins, so long as they have $$$ to back it up?