@mavnn @evan In the ordinary course of events, to see the boosted post, you would have to be following the bot. If the argument is this service will help expose hashtagged posts to broader audiences, that value is only realized if the bot has followers. Some number of those who follow the bot will probably also follow people they find through it.
I think where some of us see this potentially getting sticky for very narrow or personal hashtags, the bot may be seen as an adequate substitute for following the original person. And in the case that kicked off the debate, a hashtag used by one specific person for some of their more intimate work, a bot that exists to repost that hashtag *looks like* an attempt to do exactly that. Whether intended to or not, I understand the icky feeling that gave people.
As I've expanded on elsewhere, even though I don't specifically think Evan intends this, inserting the bot in the middle is an intermediation and poses some risks. If people follow the bot as a substitute for a hashtag feed, that's fine, but it's still an account, not a feed. The controller of the bot could begin to make editorial decisions about which posts to boost or censor, could start inserting other original content, could change direction entirely, etc. And to whatever extent that works, it would have been done on the back of the original work of others plus some non-consensual mass aggregation.