I think auto-voting is an excellent way to support content producers. It's certainly not a replacement for manual curation, engagement and conversations, (daily if possible) but it is a way to maximize both curation rewards and support, while focusing attention elsewhere in the real world. NO ONE has enough time to upvote everything worth upvoting - so in addition to manual curating, auto-voting makes the hive ecosystem functional on the scale that it sustainable.

I appreciate your thoughts here, I've had these considerations too.