Flagging (or downvoting) is a complicated subject which I've addressed before. I agree, some people see a flag, think they did something wrong, and don't come back.

As for bots, I have a lot of mixed feelings about that. I wrote a piece against unmonitored automatic voting (follow voting) and I've done some experiments with bot voting vs. human voting. That said, I'm not ready to call it harvesting. I also think there needs to be incentive to hold Steem Power and those who have it can do with it as they wish. I'm currently using Steem Voter to support a handful of authors and friends who I think regularly bring real value to Steemit. Before, I'd miss some of their posts and be sad that I didn't vote them up in time. Now that the voting window is longer, a good case could be made that there's time to catch them all, but I still like the idea of using my Steem Power to support authors I like. That means I don't read every single post and sometimes it means I have to go remove a vote if it's a post I don't really like. If, however, those authors usually provide valuable content to the community, I think it's a good thing to consistently support them, whether that's done automatically or manually.