This is exactly why the downvote is essential on Hive.
Authors who create content but don't engage with their audience don't really care about what they're creating. An audience can improve the ideas and discussion, and add further SEO that can also bring more views/search engine results.
Value is always going to be subjective, but I think we can say that more views is better for the blockchain as a whole.
Authors who don't care, and likely produce content just for the autovotes and going to keep doing it as long as the autovotes come in... and the autovotes are going to continue as long as it's profitable... so the downvotes make it less profitable. Eventually, hopefully, the autovoters will move their votes to authors who are more engaged and bring more views to their content.
Honestly I think it's hard for most people to think of their content in regards to the blockchain and internet as a whole.
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Nope, the autovoters will move their votes away from authors only when and because their "curation" rewards would be diminished by the downvotes that those same authors potentially would receive. But for no other reason. They really don't give a damn if those authors respond to comments, engage, withdraw their earnings or whatever.
If they don't bother updating their autovotes based on metrics that provide value to the ecosystem then we have to use downvotes to encourage them to do so for the health of the ecosystem. This may also encourage manual voters if as you say rewards/APR are that important to check on those requirements before voting posts up. Too long have blind autovotes received the same APR as those putting in manual effort without consequences and caused a lot of authors to become the same as the one mentioned in this post. It's proof of brain for a reason, if you're not using yours then you're bound to face some pushback.
¿We? ¿Of who the fucking "we" are you talking about?
Are you by chance implying that you are the one to define and determine what the fuck provides value to the ecosystem? That you are the one who knows what's the best for the health of the ecosystem? Or that you have the slightest idea of what a metric is or means?
But what is the last straw of stupidity is that you imply "we" should and have to use downvotes to punish the autovoters you don't like and please your whims as you wish.
Holy shit! Oh yeah, tell me more about proof of brain.
You've done nothing but complain here for years and for some reason you're the minority here defending someone providing close to nothing of value to this ecosystem but being a top 10 author for months if not years due to autovotes. It's clear as day that users like that don't make this ecosystem better and only taint it to look bad to newcomers as many here in the comments have mentioned. If someone doesn't step in to warn the autovoters and adjust the rewards a little we'll easily become like trending on steem or blurt. I don't know what mental issues you have but I'll stop feeding the obvious troll at this point.