I have always felt that those bounty reports should have been done off-forum... Either on a dedicated site that was built for nothing but handling those bounty users, or maybe even in a google spreadsheet document directly.
They add page views, which affect forum ad revenue.
As far as I know, the forum doesn't need money and theymos doesn't care about ad revenue. I still don't get how "proof of authentication" isn't considered an insubstantial post, thousands of spambots post the same crap millions of times. What's the use of that?
At least it's mainly concentrated on a few boards, so it's quite easy to avoid.
The "proof of authentication" posts are posts that prove that a particular person was the one responsible for creating social media posts on various other social media platforms.
Again, these posts are not hurting anyone. Bounty posts are in their own sub, and no bounty thread is going to interfere with anyone reading any thread.
I don't believe theymos has ever said that he doesn't care about ad revenue. He sells forum ads, so he obviously cares enough to sell ads.