Hi Steve,
I did some self voting at the beginning but then heard a video or read something from Dan where he said that this is a bad thing. I then thought about it and sure, why would you self vote when the platform is about to curate the value of the contribution of others - it does not make any sense. All self voters should be regarding themselves as behaving antisocial towards the platform.
Is this too harsh ?
It's up to each of us to decide what is right, but all we do can be seen by others. I appreciate that some minnows are desperate for anything. I saw one spamming comments and voting up his own without voting on the post. That is just mean and he got flagged
Yes, the good thing is that everything is public, so over time the people who behave antisocial towards the platform will be seen as exactly that and then they realise that this was maybe not a good idea. At the end - at least in my view - nobody wants to be seen as an a*hole .. Interesting social experiment :-)
Though, I have to admit I did recently upvote own content I published on my companies accounts - this then would be also not fair as I am biased and have a self interest ..