That's the price you pay for liquidity, and the alternative (paying a difference in price far more than 0.01%) makes everyone worse off except other people competing in the markets. The money HFT's make comes from other people trading the zero sum short term trading game, not you (assuming you are longer term investor or non-participant in the market), so why should you or others in your situation get worked up about it? It seems like either a demonization of that which people do not understand, a class warfare sort of vibe, or both.
It’s weird to be how much some people hate market makers and traders who apply arbitrage strategies. I don’t think there would be as much hatred for HFTs if people understood what it is they do. They make markets on securities and arbitrage things. For example, creating units of SPY when it gets too far above NAV to bring the NAV back in line with the index. I’m sure there are more strategies I’m unaware of, but it’s not like Millionaire HFT man is picking the pockets of retail traders, there’s real money to be made elsewhere.
I agree; it's as abstract as software but you can't really go to school to learn about it. It's more of an indictment of the tribal nature of humans and today's popular political narratives than of the intelligence of the OP's, who I assume are very smart. Deep-rooted emotions like jealousy and fear of the unknown can lead to shallow dismissals of complex and important systems.
It would be slightly amusing to see some sort of HFT ban, only to see people speedrun re-inventing HFT as numerous problems unfold, like dad putting in a market order for AAPL on a day it had a VWAP of $185 and having his trade execute at an average price of $690. Or more serious problems like shortages and surpluses of commodities in different locations due to bad price information.