It does make sense and all our downvotes are done manually too. Advertising is meant to cost though, if it doesn't it will instantly get abused like it was for the longest time when there were no downvotes. So yes, if someone writes great posts and uses bid bots they should not be downvoted as hard but they should still not receive a ROI from the bid bot votes on top of the attention, if they receive other votes despite the bots because the content is great then it is worth it but over 90% of bid bot votes we have seen and downvoted have not been used for "promotion/visibility/advertisement" meaning they are usually a day or two late and the content is crap. They are just buying votes for the profit. Bid bot owners won't sell unprofitable votes for "promotion" as they know almost no one is interested in buying votes for it so they lure them in with the profit while they make both the bid and the curation and outperform honest curators in ROI.
I wrote another post about this recently but it's not really something you can put down in 1-2 posts as there are so many connected parts to it which all compliment each other. Anyway, it's a bit disappointing reading what people have to say about the downvotes when we're sticking our necks out to do what is best for the platform and to get the same authors curation for free instead of having to buy them but I guess it's just something new that not many understand completely yet why it is happening and might do better over time.
There have always been flags, just not a separate pool for them. Which makes me wonder why that separate pool was created. Were there too few flags? I didn't see a single downvote from any larger stake holders being handed out hardly at all prior to, except during various wars like with Grumpy Cat and Belly Rub. I didn't see any bot police then, which again begs the question, why was a separate downvote pool created?
I think a better solution would have been to eliminate bot usage from the protocols altogether so all the big vote sellers are forced to handle their books and customers manually. Not really possible perhaps at this stage, so instead, maybe the bot owners could take responsibility and have a review board for the things people are bidding for before a vote goes out? Blacklists are great, but easily manipulated and steered around. I'm sure other solutions are there too, but little dolphins don't get heard very often by closed whale pods.
The main thing is, and you guys do justify your flags - most don't - is a downvote has a negative connotation and incites bad publicity. I know people want to come to STEEM, but they won't the way it is right now.