When your list is made up of 1/3 alt accounts, it could appear as one person with a bunch of sock puppet accounts holding a grudge. [...]
without even looking at a post just decide that every post made by that person should be flagged, that is petty
You seem to be mixing up two things. The downvotes don't go automatically towards a person, they follow another downvoting account. This particular trail follows curangel, and the downvotes it gives are decided on every 12 hours by its delegators. We don't downvote for anyone's personal grudges, I guarantee that by moderating the submissions. If no valid reason is given which aligns with the whitepapers reasoning for downvotes, it will be removed.
Trails are useful to use your full influence when you don't have the time, you can follow someone you trust without giving up the possibility to vote yourself when you want to like you would do with a delegation.
I agree with your sentiment about automated votes for an account - and for me that's valid for both up- and downvotes! Someone should have a look at the post before a vote is cast.
Does that mean if I had 10 accounts I should get 10 times the say as a person using a single account?
Your voice on here depends on your stake. If you split it over 10 accounts which all vote the same posts or keep it on only one doesn't matter.
Glad to see I was wrong about steem auto, I thought that seemed a little too shitty to actually be allowed.
I understand that your voice depends on your stake. I still stand by the comment about 1/3 of your voting trail though, that is a terrible look if you want to be taken seriously as a positive movement on the platform.
I still don't get why someone who uses their downvote (manually or by delegation) would need to be a regular poster, or even just tell who they really are. Weirdly, nobody cares about upvote trails and looks at all the accounts in there. There are upvote trails with >1000 followers, many of them long dead.
We don't have influence on the trail, we didn't "create" it and we can't exclude anyone. It would maybe look prettier if they delegated because the list of downvotes would be shorter, but then they wouldn't be able to use their upvotes themselves.
On the flipside, a longer list of downvotes might give more people the courage to use their own downvotes. Idk, I just keep thinking out loud because I fail to see the issue.
With posts, fair enough. How does that go when it comes to voting on witnesses though?
Same, everything is stake weighted. The only way to prevent multiple accounts having more influence on anything. It doesn't allow for anything to be egalitarian, but at least someone with more stake has more to lose when they vote maliciously.