Completely agree on that. There's a visibility problem for most authors, after 1h you enter in the "dark steem". And when a whale upvote itself, he/she doesn't need to care about the quality of the post, he/she will be visible and people will upvote to get a share. Wrote about it here: https://steemit.com/steemit-ideas/@sictransitgloria/steem-is-not-a-ponzi-scheme-but-it-relies-strongly-on-co-option-and-we-can-hope-it-will-get-better-in-the-future

In the case of the founders or witness, I can understand an self-upvote if they have an important "official" message for the community