The way I see it, auto-votes are crucial for Hive.

Having the ability to build your blog over time, getting a following which eventually comes with a small-medium 'guaranteed' post payout is a large part of what makes Hive attractive.

The reality is that 99%+ of content on Hive is just pure garbage, not interesting to most, often just chasing the upvotes that come from certain challenges or communities. Nobody in their right mind would ever spend money to buy Hive, power it up, browse through Hive posts, and give out upvotes, curating what is good and what they like.

What I do see as something that works here, is that you have your blog, find like-minded people or those who share the same interests, make friends & put them into your auto-upvote list. I tried to find new users to support in the past, but it pretty much always turns out the same way. Sooner than later, they give up and move on, cashing out what they earned and never come back.

I do tend to be a bit lazy when it comes down to my auto-vote list, but will start to re-configure it now that I'm growing my HP stake agressively. Friends that I made will always get a spot on it, aside from that, I mainly just look at

1. Is someone good for Hive, all bad KE accounts will get kicked off, there is no excuse not to fix it at these price levels.
2. Posting & Content consistency: I generally tend to prefer bloggers who have their niche of what they are obsessed with and have a genuine blog (It's rather rare unfortunately)
3. Those that upvote me: Since honestly I don't care that much about most content, those that meet #1 & #2 who also upvote me obviously will get higher on my list compared to those who are not.

I'm also thinking of starting some kind of auto-upvote list for newer & smaller accounts (once my stake is big enough), reserving 20% of my votes or so for those who meet the criteria. (Showing they are here for the long run, willing to invest some, content that is consistent and made with some passion behind it) . I would not actively search for them but instead allow anyone to apply.

So as an individual user on Hive, I don't think there is anything wrong with voting on the same people especially if if are ones who are here for the long run and are building their stake instead of just leeching rewards.

What I don't like is seeing curation groups just automatically voting on the same accounts (I believe it happens because the ones curating are also just lazy wanting an easy earnings instead of doing the work plowing through the garbage to find undiscovered users or content). Often the accounts that always get votes also just cash everything out and have horrible KE.