I am not against auto upvotes. (1) we cannot stop it. (2) I think when people have been here a longtime and they get outsized rewards that makes sense as long as they have a "good" blog with engagement.

I think one reason people see things as cronyism is because when people are onboarded they are not explained the platform well.

People MAY get paid to post but they are not guaranteed to get rewards on post.

How people get their HIVE matters. "Good" stakeholders get outsized rewards. "Bad" stakeholders either need a whale friend or they tend to get very small votes.

Even if someone has an "amazing" blog, if they are not a good stakeholder I am less likely to upvote them. If someone gets the benefit of large auto upvotes and they sell the majority of their rewards, this is bad for onboarding new users because it is confusing.

I think a lot of your points are valid and just helps bring to light how nuanced downvotes are. People who have simple explanations of downvotes tend to be ignorant (I do not mean ignorant in a bad way).

I think downvoting for "over rewarded" posts does not make a lot of sense. I don't do it. I think the only time it makes sense to downvote for overrewarded posts is when a post is getting massive rewards because curators are pilling in for max rewards vs reading the post and engaging with the users on their blog.