Was this appropriate use of Vote Kick?

I did a Frontlines today where I noticed we had an AFK player. They were obviously on /follow on another player. After about 2-3 minutes into the match I alerted the alliance that we had an AFK player. And they were fully AFK - it's not like they were strategically camping base or something, they were a healer in the middle of the battle doing absolutely nothing. In all honesty I thought they were just a broken bot.

After I mentioned the AFK player they did not say anything at all to explain why they weren't participating and on /follow.

So a few minutes later at 15:00 I initiated vote kick. Surprise! They chimed in that they aren't AFK, and are reporting me for abusing vote kick. It was too late and they got kicked.

The buddy they were on /follow began to berate me about it saying "There's an AFK timer to weed out AFK players" and stuff like that.

I'm of the opinion that vote kick was used for a 100% valid reason. If you queue into a Frontlines and something is taking your attention that you cannot participate for entire 5 minutes then you shouldn't have queued. And AFK is a vote kick option for a reason.

Anyways, I just wanted to know if I somehow have the wrong mindset here or if I broke any rules.

I had same problem. Kicked an afk alt and their main vote kicked me. I don't see anything wrong as they are a well-known afkers (in a lot of matches) but it's frustrating when people don't pay attention or care about playing at all. Joined the next matches and I haven't seen their names again, but I sure will record and report directly next time.

You were within your rights. I've seen players like that where they've gone healer and the end of the match has 0 healing/damage done by their name. Said person follows someone (usually their main account/friend) and literally does nothing aside from somehow dodge the afk auto-kick. Seriously, even a bot would be better than those people (or my personal fav, someone controlling 3 BRDs to all focus the same target and burst attack in unison).

If you called them out in alliance/party chat initially and got no resistance from either of them then that's the smoking gun of an afk'er/bot on /follow. I try to do the same thing if I see those types and am able to, but the trick is sometimes getting everyone else in your party on-board for it. Had some vote-dismisses for blatant botting or afk'ing not passing.

Nope you where in the right, these people have ruined PVP in this game and are cheating to beat the afk timer.

Yeah, if it's like you describe, you were on your right to kick them. Problem is these people are queueing frontlines only for the exp...and many of them move or cast something from time to time in order to prevent the autokick but on reality they are afk doing something else. It has become so generalized that they think they are in their total right to do so.
Frontlines is already a casual mode, but this further makes people even take it less serious.
If SE was kind enough to add an exp reward and incentivize pvp, least thing players should do is be considerate enough to at least attempt to play, but some peoples' nature boils down to abusing the system. Sad but true.

If one player is auto-following another for several minutes, and does nothing to contribute to the fight; they are definitely afk. The afk player was just trying to use the auto-follow feature to circumvent the afk-kick timer. You were in the right to initiate a vote kick. The afk player was angry that you caught them in the act of being afk, so they threatened to report you for the vote kick. Your use of vote kick is 100% valid, and you broke no rules.

Yeap, your report was valid for kicking the afker. In fact, you are allowed to kick for "Difference of playstyle" (people are allowed to be kicked if they don't do what the team tells them to) so you're covered in more than one way. :D

It's more than likely that it was one person dual boxing and they were giving you crap for catching them. Next time don't advertise, the alliance can't help with the kick. The only reason I say that is cause if you announce it first it may invite a preemptive kick vote against you.

I was there that match, though I was in a different party.

I caught that same individual AFKing hiding on a ledge the very next match. I called them out in part chat, "hey, xxx xxx are you going to AFK hiding on that ledge the whole match?" They responded, "depends." We kicked him/her again. Then, about an hour later I saw the same person doing it again, only this time they were doing it with the same person who caused a stink in alliance chat the first time.

Both of them are from Balmung, and if I see it again, I'll be reporting both using the new report PVP option they just rolled out.