They lost the ability to get a curation reward for a vote they paced on a post.
Unless you are front-running bots, the curation rewards from a redfish account are likely to be way below 5/10 cents a week.
Forget about adding 0.001s together and go all in with an upvote combined with a comment, especially on a reply to a reply on a post where no-one has upvoted Any comments - this will push that comment to the top, even if the payout will be nothing.
Even a dust vote can make a huge difference to visibility of a comment in this case. And, if someone else the sees this comment a dust account has upvoted and votes it too, the curation reward here is likely to be far superior of one coming from a post.
Learning to front run bots is a good skill to learn for your future payouts. I still do this thanks to you. I have several places I can go to and vote before bots get to them and I do this daily. I realize this is small potatoes, but If I get 0.020 instead of 0.001 on many votes a week, it makes a difference over time.
Sadly, that 5-10 cents a week is more than noobs get on all their posts in many cases.
Upvoting comments, especially your own for visibility, is something many people here frown upon. I have been talking to several people who were doing that rampant comment voting for a while and since have stopped. The reason they stopped was that they kept getting bad remarks about it. I cannot believe you support this idea.
But I'm not someone trying to get whales to upvote my replies, so I do not know the ins and outs of what they vote for. I almost never even visit those posts and when I do, I retreat quickly. I am sure this is to my own detriment, but I cannot take the butt kissing up there.
I agree that if you get big votes on a comment after you voted it you can get money for it. This may have happened to me 10 times in a year and a half. I upvote good comments on my posts and others frequently and as far as I know this is charity on my part, even though small.
You misunderstood.
Voting a comment made by another deemed to be the best comment on a post, that has not been voted on as yet, will:
More visibility, more chance of seeing this comment (and your awesome reply), more chance of future votes.
A 5 cent vote on top of a dust voted comment will earn the dust account holder more than voting on a post in most cases.
Hmm... I would love to see stats on how many dust votes end up getting A+ rewards. I still don't recommend dust voting, but if you know of someone making it work, please introduce me. I'm all about the minnow tips over here.