I don't use any auto-voting service mainly because I can't afford to. LOL
Like yourself, I would like to automate voting for a few individuals and maybe the odd community as a whole but that would be out of sheer laziness rather than any deliberate plan to enhance rewards for myself. IMV it's really hard work and eats up a lot of valuable time to trawl through my friends, followers, communities to see "Who's posted since I last looked?" so an auto-voting capability, I can see, would be beneficial. The question is: "What value is that vote to the recipient other than financial?" What I mean is, I could, for example, stick yourself on an auto-vote and never look at your work or account again. Now is that:
- Supporting you?
- Is that taking an interest in your work?
- Is that even some loose form of friendship?
imgae source
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!