Sorry I hadn't seen this post earlier, it's a good one.
And it would have preemptively answered some questions I asked in my latest post: https://steemit.com/steemit/@drutter/i-keep-getting-free-money-from-invisible-secret-upvotes

I remain pretty withdrawn from most drama and/or politics around here. I try to focus mainly on content-creation and grinding my way toward a new camera (someday). I find myself getting burned (generally by people with differing opinions and more Steem) when I involve myself in anything else.

I've been noticing the fulltimebotXX upvotes on some of my comments. I found them to be a good use of curation (my lower quality comments never got upvoted, but my better comments sometimes did). It wasn't random, and there didn't seem to be any ulterior motive.
When I noticed the invisible/secret upvotes through the Steemit frontend more recently, I didn't realize it was related to the fulltimebot upvotes. Now, I'm gathering that's what happened.

I don't know 'fulltimegeek' at all, so I can't carry water for him, but I've found his curation bots to be helpful and appropriate.

I'm extremely against censorship. I'm here on Steemit BECAUSE I fled the censorship of YouTube and FaceBook. So for this place to become more and more controlled, more and more artificial..... it's not sitting well at all.

I realize Steem isn't Steemit and vice versa. And yes, the blockchain is still working properly, and our tokens are still safe, etc etc. But come on, shadowbanning and outright silencing? And the way it's becoming more common... a solution to just about every problem?

Maybe I should just focus on my content creation. But.... what kind of place am I contributing to? Do I even want to put my full effort in, here, knowing it can and will be manipulated and censored as convenient? How much of my heart and soul should I put into a place I'll probably have to leave soon, to escape the censorship which seems to follow?