Purchasing votes is also a form of self-upvoting and that's also at the expense of everyone else.
Right now, we have a man abusing that form of self-upvote on the trending page, multiple times. Some of those posts have up to TEN self-upvotes and that doesn't even include his own.
I self-upvote my posts and it's always my mission to hand out as much as my self-vote was worth, or more, in the comment section. I want visibility and at the same time I want to reward people for looking. I believe this practice is fair.
On the other hand, that gentleman currently self-upvoting his work to the top of the trending page with the help of promotion bots is doing it to mislead others into voting.
Many new members do not realize people can purchase votes. They think the post is there because it is popular. Someone self-voting with the hopes of turning an ever greater profit using misdirection is a far worse problem. Many of those new members feel incredibly misled, used and abused after finding out the truth.
Advertising is a fact of life, but we do not pay Walmart for leaving a flyer in our mailbox. That gentleman could have advertised his book, then it's up to others to visit his blog and read it if the advertisement was enough to make them feel interested. That's how advertising works. The way this is be handled here falls under false advertising and that could lead to problems like paying fines down the road if they get caught. Steemit could also be held responsible if nothing is done to correct the problem.
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I support self-upvote 100%. I have upvoted all of my posts.
The issue with selling vote is the same as the issue with self-upvote and non-linear reward would also take care of this.
Linear reward curve incentivize selling votes at the expense of everyone else who doesn't sell votes. In the long run, it will lead to everyone wanting to sell their votes.
People just don't realize and don't understand how Steem works for the most part. The sooner the solution will be implemented the better.