This is ridiculous, and if they truly cared about reward pool abuse, I imagine all of these voting bots could easily prevent people from using their service on their own posts, but they're not likely to. This study alone shows that @randowhale would earn about 90% less money if people couldn't use it on their own links.

I'm very against gaming the system for profit, as it violates the guidelines set forth in the Steem Whitepaper. Self upvoting is bad enough, but when you allow people to buy votes simply so they can profit, you create an environment that stiffles real engagement, and simply encourages more abuse...