Hi Skramatters,

Some people need Steem and are willing to pay 20% for it, I guess they really plan on being active. Nothing is wrong with self voting in my opinion unless you are upvoting your own comments. A Spam post is a Spam post with or without a self upvote.

Bad actors are people who steal other people's work, there are a few accounts that just post a stolen photo, say where they stole it from as if it's okay and bid it up. This is not right. Nor is a thoughtless post of a few words with a self upvote. Upvoting your own comments is weak too. There are also things people promote such as antivaxing or other conspiracy theororists that I won't delegate too because I fundamentally disagree with them.

I don't think selling votes is bad if you have a white list. For Steem to have economic value there has to be supply and demand. Look into OCDb by Acidyo, they have a strong community and an excellent whitelist. Most of my large payouts are because I buy votes off them, I also delegate so people can buy my votes.

It's economics, as long as you aren't promoting things that can hurt people such as not getting a vaccination, hatred, or unrestricted gun ownership I don't care what you do.

Edit: wanted to say HF21 should remove a lot of the benefits of buying and selling votes as they are probably increasing curation rewards to 50%. By buying upvotes you are really just helping those who curate.