@solar If you're a minnow you'll lose the flag war. Unfortunately we can't do too much aside from alerting the whales who support us to abusive self upvoters. We can try to point it out in comments, and not follow those people - but in the scheme of things, we also depend on the whales who remember what it was like to be a minnow (maybe not on here, but in life !) to use their power to protect the community as a whole. 
 - Basically - flagrant self upvotes from whales threatens the survival of Steemit as it drains the reward pool.  So, it's in the interest of anyone who views this as a long term community, and not a casino, to call out the assholes :-)