Glad to run into you again, @anthonyadavisii

I agree that manual curation is still the best way to go, but while I was absent I set up a series of aurovotes and followed a couple of curation trails.

Another thing that bothered me about the situation with the curation trails I mentioned above was the lack of transparency: I tried to figure out which curation trail had voted on those posts, but couldn't find it...

When you mention "an app similar to Smartsteem", you are talking about selling votes?

Selling votes is another league, IMO. I did it for a while, but just like your friend I couldn't live with the fact that my vote could go to simply everyone, so I stopped doing it.

The curation trails I follow now (with only a small percentage of my voting power) are aimed at supporting people more than earning curation rewards, like @newbieresteemday and @friendsofgondor. Of course, you can never be 100% sure where your vote ends up, but I do believe both initiatives work with the best intentions.

I still have some autovotes set up, since I'm still not active regularly. Just like you, I've set up the autovote system to vote on people that produce good content and have the right attitude towards SteemIt. I'll probably keep those set up until I'm full power again (although I suck at manual curation, and those autovotes earn me 5 to 10 times more in curation rewards than when I did everything myself, lol)