Isn't manipulation the same thing as controlling? I am sure traders are behind these bots. But did you know that even bots compete with each other? Those who have fund to buy bots try to buy the best bots on the market but these bots can easily get busted by a single huge dump or huge buy. So I do not think that Bots are actually controlling the Bitcoin prices, but for sure whales do.
i don't think you can call those "bots", these things are more like predefined scripts that run on the internet trying to repeat the same thing in an infinite loop. a true trading bot is not something that keeps
placing bets opening new orders in the order book that could easily be fooled into executing the big red stop loss button and lead to a loss.
as for "control", people say that because they are looking for someone or something to blame so what better than bots?!