It sounds to me like you haven't understood my argument at all. The problem is that with bid bots it is possible to buy votes to have your post in Trending while gaining at least as much in author rewards as one has paid for the votes. Vote buying used to be effectively free of charge. That is, any advertiser could come and buy votes from bid bots while getting all the attention from having their post in Trending - for free or even with a positive return on investment! Before HF 21, Trending used to be filled with shitposts and advertisements. Why not? It was free of cost to put them there. That devalued the whole platform.

The goal should be to downvote everything voted by bid bots in Trending so as to make the organically curated content preferred by the voting community dominate it. That way, Steemit will look attractive instead of a garbage pile of shit posts and advertisements.