So your saying upvotes worth less than $0.01 are too small and being orphaned? Sounds like a scaling problem.
Yes I agree spamming one word replys is not helping steemit. But if someone wants to buy steem from an exchange power it up and self upvote I do not see a direct problem with that. Unless you are saying somehow that is causing payouts for small upvotes worth less than $0.01?
I have no problem with self upvote but ALWAYS upvoting a 1-2 word comment wether self or others and authors getting paid for it is UNFAIR to those who posts great contents/comments and get zero because they only receive 0.01 SBD reward to be rounded off to zero. And that is NOT preventing spam but is actually tolerating spam (by "rich" spammers only) and pushing away "poor" newbies who can contribute great contents.
Reference:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@thedarkhorse/your-2-cent-vote-is-worthless-the-real-deal-on-dust-votes