Thank you for your elaborate comment @elfspice! Let me first start by saying I don't think you're a big meany at all! ;-)

I did not know all the ins and outs of the project (as I stated) and I mainly used it as an example, a stepping stone to my bigger issue. Thank you for explaining a bit more about the project to me. I agree that self-upvoting excessively should be punished somehow (maybe punish is a strong word, counteract might be good here). I understand why non-whales do it though. Heck, I even understand why big whales would do it, though I think with how much they have invested in the platform and the effect their votes have, they should know better.

I can completely get behind the idea of banning it on the blockchain level and I would not be sad to see it go at all. If no one can upvote themselves, things would feel a lot fairer. Though in that case, I'd be worried about whales with alt accounts, but yeah...

How do you think interface changes can work towards a fairer rewards outcome? One thing I read a while ago was hiding pending payouts. How do you feel about that? At first, I thought "No way, I want to see my pending payouts!", but then I figured it might be better, because it would make it harder for people to 'follow the money' on big upvotes. Though ofcourse you can always check out past payouts on people's blogs, so I wonder how much effect it would really have.

I think we have many minnows who are not happy with how things are going now. They themselves try to be fair in their upvotes (even if they upvote themselves aswell), but with the other part of new minnows simply going for a quick buck through 'follower for follower' ideas, we don't have a big group of people trying to be fair. I still don't know how to combat ideas like 'follower for follower', other than to try and educate. In my opinion, it's really harming the platform both with spam and upvotes on crap content.

I don't know about dolphins and whales though. I don't know many at all, because they mostly go indepth on crypto topics quite a bit and my knowledge is very limited there, so I skip over it or can't contribute to their conversations. I wonder how they feel about Steemit and I wonder how they vote. Do they vote minnows a lot, or is it like a 'rich people making other richies more rich' kinda thing? I have noticed a few trying to build up their friends by upvoting all of their posts, which I understand. I'm doing the same for my brother, though my votes don't do much.

I guess my main focus is the other minnows on the platform, just struggling to get seen, so my overall view is somewhat limited at times.

Anyway, thanks again for your comment and also for the compliment. I try to be as honest as I can, though sometimes I tone it down a bit to not piss people off :-)