I think if someone invested his own money and upvote himself to help a bit if no whale is upvoting him is ok. The bad think that those bot owners are upvoting them selfs to sell mote votes, the thing that I see here is that bots are supporting bots rigth now and real creator suffer from that is they don't buy an upvote.
Sometimes bots just comment us simple minnows and we can't even flag them because we are afraid or it will not even make the change when they upvote their comments.
About flagging, I think we have to flag spam and those bot's comment, instead of flagging ideas we don't agree with.
I agree with you regarding flagging - flag the spam and people's misuse of the platform. Not the ideas.
Also up-voting one's own comments can be OK.