I don't condone removing upvotes unless the post is clearly some type of scam or plagiarism. Removing a downvote without a refund just due to quality of content is basically stealing - someone paid for a service and the funds were taken but the service was not delivered (on purpose).

Ideally with #newsteem people won't purchase votes for "unworthy" content in the first place because it will be a money-losing proposition due to the downvotes. So if this works bot owners won't need to remove votes or use a whitelist because the system will police itself.

As for a bot war, I find that unlikely since I think most of the bot owners are actually pretty responsible. If they don't care what they are promoting it's usually because they just don't care anymore and not because of any malicious intent.