I am grateful for the auto-votes I do receive don't get me wrong. Personally I stick to some rules that I've developed when posting. Like most of my posts have at least 500 words if they're not full of pictures, I love to blog about my son!
I definitely prefer readers and engagement over anything though, auto-vote or not. Because of reward timing most of my friends posts do kind of well, so I set auto-votes on them so I can support them and get better curation.
My way of engaging with friends, even if I already upvoted from an autovote is the same for anyone I follow. I just troll through my friends posts from hive.blog and usually do much less on curation and that's why my curation performance isn't as good as some. I'll sacrifice 5% though to support the people I follow, it's worth it imo.
I also have plenty of time on my hands with COVID and all!