In many cases it is the only indirect route to the owners.

I can see this being the case at times, but I noticed the link on your post the other day the bot service had a post and comment in the last 7 days I threw my weak downvotes on. I figure if not for the greed of those running the service there would be very few posts to target. They get away unscathed and richer while the person using their service takes full brunt.

There is this going on with one of the vote services right now, with flexing going on. I used a downvote there as well for the bullying being used under a pretense of seeking dialogue with the writer of the post.

https://steemit.com/bots/@lordbutterfly/fyrstikken-and-booster-bot-just-declared-war-on-newsteem-u5xviafg

As you can see, the authors post has been greyed.

Will be interesting to see where all of this goes.