I have always been against automatic vote, if you really build relationships with other users, it implies the reading of their materials and live comments on the subject.
But, I understand that it's hard to find free time for this (every day follow updates of friends and participate in discussions). And auto-vote in a sense is an opportunity to say Hello, to express respect for your relationship. Accordingly, if you withdrew from somebody list you have lost the interest of this person to you. So your actions in this case are absolutely correct.
Spamming comments is frowned upon by the community.
Comment spam is currently defined by @steemcleaners as:
10 or more generic comments per day that are not in response to a question posed by the post or comment. “Thanks”, “Great Post!”, “Informative Post” , “Great Photo!”, “Good”, “Like”, “Nice”, “Wow”, “Cute”, “Follow me”, etc.
Commenting on old posts to hide self up-votes or a voting trail.
Copy/Paste comments that serve no purpose or the purpose is self promotion (including copying and pasting similar comments in rotating way).
Comments that inform the contributor that they have been up upvoted, resteemed, or flagged when the curator does not actually upvote, resteem, or flag the post.
Fishing/farming votes by using multiple accounts to comment on posts by known comment curators.
Unsolicited and off topic referral links.
Continued comment spamming may result in action from the cheetah bot.
More Info: Abuse Guide - 2017.