The whole thing is a rather slippery slope. I feel that we are in a world of two steemits at the moment. Those that are respectful to the platform in some fashion and those that aren't. Many of the aren'ts are new members with low rank.
I don't know about the whales that are playing daisy-chain games with many accounts, whether they are new investors or have been pulling crap since the beginning.
I don't feel the sense of community that I felt before HF19 and steemit has only been functioning for 15 months or so. A trend of community divide, that has lasted more than 5% of the platforms existence, is something to be concerned about.
I feel the ones that care about steemit are failing to realize that the culture is changing rapidly on this platform. So many of the newest steemians are disillusioned about their experience. "A social media site that demands original content and thoughtful commentary, screw that."
The new accounts have definitely taken over the majority of users. They don't know anything of success on the sight and view the early adapters as evil or benefactors. These new accounts tend to upvote themselves at any chance and take the socialness of the experience, out of the picture.
It would seem to me that the comment self-upvoting be curtailed with a change to some of the coding. It is perverting the platform and it's not going away.