This is a highly controversial topic.

I used to support vote-selling platforms when it first started as i saw that its a great feature that can be used to highlight great content. I no longer support them though..

It's not that vote-selling/buying is a bad thing. It's just something there to use.. But like every other problems on earth, it's how we people use it or rather abused it that turned into a shitshow it is today.

Voting a content is supposed to be an act of rewarding a creator for a content that the consumer liked.. as such ideally highly voted posts are those that people like for whatever reason. Quality is subjective but the market is the market.

Now imagine that instead of a creator creating content that their audience have to like, said creator now can literally shitpost and spam the blockchain as a placeholder, pay a vote-seller, get profit.

What is the value of the Steem token if people can pay Steem to buy more Steem? What is the value of the Steem Blockchain if Proof-of-Brain as described in the Steem Whitepaper no longer works?

It is true that a person's Steem Power represents their stake in the reward distribution voting mechanism and one can do whatever one likes with their own stake.

But I believe there should be a counter measure to make vote-selling/buying not as rampant/profitable as it is now. Perhaps a diminished return physics in place or a superlinear/sublinear reward curve instead of the linear curve we have now.

otherwise there is no reason for investors to invest in the development of the steem blockchain when their investments leaks out into the exchange almost immediately.

This is just my strong opinon loosely held.. There will be those that disagree with me, I will get some points wrong. I hope discourse can be civil if anyone feels like discussing more.