"If you don't value your own posts by selfvoting then why should others?" is such a dumb statement it hurts, an even bigger brainwash than the one he insinuates happened against self voting.

Sure curation isn't perfect but I believe it's way better on Hive right now than it has ever been. Not voting your own posts just means you're spending your voting power appreciating other people's work, thus using your influence to get them to come to your posts as well. Of course I don't appreciate direct or preplanned quid pro quo vote trading but there is no issues with authors voting on others that vote on their posts now and then as long as it doesn't become a constant thing. I know this isn't easy and autovotes make it difficult but that's why we have downvotes and when used well and properly most people agree with their use. For instance if someone has been getting constant autovotes but their content has become farmy/low effort and the autovoters may be afk/not aware of it there's nothing wrong with some reward adjustment there. Most of the time the authors will agree and I've seen the general sentiment of downvotes becoming better and more accepted here as long as they are used properly and carefully it is slowly becoming normalized.

Their solutions to these problems just sound dumb and sound way more like censorship than well used downvotes could ever be.