I did the same thing, I had everything on auto vote while I was away for over 2 months. At the time, I honestly felt it was better than not voting at all.

However, in my absence, I was anonymously reported by an "unknown party". I was notified several days ago that I had been blacklisted on Spaminator, not by SteemCleaners but by a friend. When I inquired as to why or how this could have happened, I was told that I had voted on a post or comment of someone who was somehow abusing the system. I was accused of colluding with this abuser. It was completely outrageous!

I inquired but received no further information. When exactly did this happen? Who was this person? Why was I being punished for something someone else did? How is this justice? Who initiated this?

Yes, in a perfect world it would seem that temporarily auto voting would be OK.

However, auto voting is what is being used to abuse this system. This is how it is being done. Vote farmers use auto voting.

What auto voting does is it promotes profit over quality.

When people vote based on how much profit they can get in return, when they collude with others to get return votes, this is farming votes.

I can dress it up pretty by saying I am just voting for nice people, my friends, and/or people I trust. But the fact is, if I do that, I am not voting on the quality or content of the actual post. Then, I am voting for people and for profit.

It is what it is.

I did it too. I am not without blame. However, I can now see that it is not right, especially when I look at the bigger picture. What I was doing, using an auto voter, was not helping Steem. I was in a small way contributing to the problem.

If I want to increase the actual "value" of what is available on Steem, I need to vote based on quality. Yes, granted that makes things a lot more difficult and time-consuming.

Oh certainly, this and other experiences such as this have really made me question what I am doing here on Steem. Is this something I want to be a part of? Is there hope that things might change? I am just not sure. I really am not sure.

But, I hope so!

Thanks for taking the time to read and leave feedback @blanchy.sports