Well, there's a place for auto-votes as well.
In my opinion, if you're going to go away from Steemit for 1 day or 2, auto-votes are a must to have enabled in order to invest into your high quality content authors.
On the other hand, @friendsofgondor and a couple other curating trails have a noble cause so they aren't that bad as they don't intend to exploit anything or pump up crap authors.
The most important thing is to research, analyze and choose the projects, initiatives and authors you feel comfortable backing.
I see you're highly active here, keep on doing this and you'll go far... that was how I did it, even though I don't consider myself as someone who went far.... YET! :D
Cheers
If you look from my perspective, you did get very far! Come on a rep of 62, not many of us could say this.
I write in an article that there are 2 genuine types of people on steemit. The authors who do offer a platform for interaction and commenter who gladly accept the offer. To be honest, it is my best post by far! I'm not a good author :( If you have same spare time, feel free to read it! It does give some insight about what I think could make Steem better.