The social bots like BEER and PIZZA do serve a purpose, they let the author know that they enjoyed the content, in a lot of cases that slice of pizza or that sip of beer has a greater overall value than the persons vote especially if they are on the newish side of Posting on Hive.
There is also ways the ability for you to mute them if you do not like seeing them. I have a few muted because of the size and the style of the auto comment response. One of the things I like about Hive is the lack of Advertisements, and some of those bots are nothing short of billboard advertisements of themselves.
BEER and PIZZA keep it a two line or so comment so not real intrusive when trying to look through the comments.
Yes of course, I completely agree with you. They are nothing more than a surrogate for a vote though, so in my opinion they should be excluded from the comment/post count, just that.
Yes they should, after all it is still a part of the persons comment that left the pizza or beer.