I don't understand why you say minnows would be flagged for upvoting their own comment ?
The @sadkitten initiative is a bot flagging self upvote abuse and you'd almost have to be doing only that (not upvoting others) to be targeted.
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Did not know about @sadkitten. I've seen some minnow with low numbers because of selfvotes. Some other that are bigger tend to downvote them. Usualy the bigger whales don't get a flag for selfvotes.