I went back and forth on auto votes and down votes. Both can be used and abused very easily. I also can see the positives to both but I can also see the negatives of both.
After going back and forth, I auto vote I think like 4 accounts and that is just the 4 people who I call friends and we talk about Hive stuff all day in Discord. My conscious just doesn't let me autovote big whale accounts or like autovote any post that is posted in Splinterlands community, sort of thing. I am not knocking people who do, but I want to be able to defend my choices and decisions. The internet can be a very fickle thing where people love to cancel people over little things.
Maybe one day IF I become this big massive Hive Whale and I attract the negative @**holes that auto downvote, then I may change my opinion on down voting. But right now I just block accounts I don't like or don't want to support. It works for me for now.
But I love HIVE because like most online communities that is basically a DAO of sorts... the community eventually becomes the average of it's users. If 60% of people on HIVE just autovoted everything all the time the entire blockchain would slowly turn into just garbage posts to just get the autovotes and then the price of HIVE would lower and lower and it would crumble. So while auto votes and downvotes can be decisive, so far I think it is working out pretty well.
That's just my 2 cents anyways!