Steemit ethics are a new and evolving thing. In my opening week here, I would pay people a percentage of the total money brought in by a post to have thriving discussions in my blogs. While this wasn't directly vote buying, as I was upvoting their comments and paying people to participate in intelligent discourse, it was close enough that I decided to stop.

The trickier situation is crossposting: when someone posts old or underappreciated content from another user and keeps the value of the steem power while paying out only the SBD. I'm not sure how I feel about it, and I'm not calling any of the people who do it out, but it's certainly worth discussing whether that's at minimum an ethical gray area.

But it's big of you to change your post and apologize for something that wasn't really all that terrible to begin with. Cheers