As I said in the edit, I would love to see this play out. I also believe the real offenders will circumvent your solution within hours.
This has only been true for a handful of days so the way you've described it here is not really true.
I experience and hear differently.
@l0k1 made the point of saying it was intended for determined offenders, the hope is to add friction to it. You'd be surprised how much UI affects behavior.
You know where I stand, so I am not saying this for myself, but I suspect that if you want more universal support, you should focus on the comments, not the main postings. You run the risk of forcing an opinion on people by bot, including people who aren't doing much wrong.
I'll definitely consider just targeting comments, perhaps you are right. The comments are problematic in a few ways. They worth of them is not really summarized on the post so it doesn't open the commenter to the kind of scrutiny that Steemit relies on to keep abuse in check.
I don't understand what you mean. How is it forcing an opinion?
It is an opinion that self-upvoting a main posting is a Bad Thingtm; an opinion not shared by everyone. Using a bot to enforce that opinion could make you lose support. Saying that repeatedly self-upvoting spammy comments is a Bad Thingtm is also an opinion, but probably one shared by most users.