I see a lot of this is people saying apple crippling damus is the issue.

Would this work? Subscribe to a specific relay and send it any amount of sats, then it follows your likes and sends zaps to them automatically? If damus has customizable emojis like amethyst does, you could even have certain emojis correspond to amounts to send. Then you could withdraw by liking your own post. Sort of like lntipbot on reddit, but less of an eye strain.