hmmm. good point about it going over most people's heads. The average user just won't know if he's buying votes or getting them organically, so you're definitely right - it's up to the groups with power to decide, and so far they don't seem to be pushing against it.

I'm kind of sick of whales and dolphins who are witnesses, bot owners and bot users giving us lectures on why us poor people are abusing the system by trying to profit with content that is not worthy by their personal standards.

I mean - I think the delusion is across the board, and happens on any platform. In fact, that's not a "hat" so much in the sense I was speaking. I come from marketing where you have black hat and white hat seo/social media marketing and other tactics. Buying likes on any other platform is considered black hat, but I guess it isn't considered that here. Which, is interesting.

This is one of the most sensible comments I have ever read.

I don't at all think it's disingenuous. It's natural and sensible if anything. And I can see from the response to this post that upvote bots aren't black hat on this platform. 

But on other platforms they are. If you pay for upvotes on any other social media platform, it's blackhat and you can receive penalties as a result of it. So that's why I was asking whether they were considered blackhat here. I'm still new and didn't know it was acceptable practice here on Steem.

I actually just bought my first upvotes today to test how it works out, and be familiar with the process. I'm planning to compare the effectiveness of giveaways, buying upvotes, and paying for promotion to see which has the highest ROI.