An upvote on my own post is worth approximately $0.02 anyway.

6 month later an the situation is worse. Votes from Plankton are now less the $0.005.

new authors need a bit more encouragement as many who only get $0.01 for spending an hour putting together a post

Not even that. Post which are estimated at $0.01 get rounded to $0.00 on payout day

But the worse part are whales selling votes for profit

It's sad that they dit not listen to you as it only got worse. And dramatically so with the recent rise in the price of Steam.