Hive account@financialcritic You're twisting the numbers. You self-voted 60% of all the money you gave out. It's not about annual return.

Clarification for you and everyone else:

It's not really abuse, it's just not smart to do as self-votes add no value to the platform. It's good for people to realize this while the protocol still allows it. Until the problem within the protocol is resolved, the only chance to success is if everyone stops self-voting as much as possible.

Self-voting doesn't give you a better return, it just gives you more tokens while decreasing the value of the tokens. When you withhold payouts from content creators they might produce less quality content, leave the platform or worse; spread negative reviews about SteemIt and scare away many users and potential investors. The best promotion for SteemIt is Word-of-Mouth Advertising, so the stupidest thing to do while investing in something is doing things that hurt your investment.