I'm actually a developer (not for steemit of course), stopping the whales from upvoting themselves would be a trivially easy fix.

In regard to the banking controlled social media giants, I would say steemit is better than them, even with this flaw, because it's on the blockchain, so this flaw is auditable and we're able to have an open and honest discussion about it. This is not the case with the other social media giants.