Some really interesting points to think about. I'm not surprised that buying votes came with some spam and unrelated comments as there is a lot of that around.
I would also assume that it didn't make a difference in the long run because the votes are only there if you buy, maybe someone would see a difference in the long run if they were consistently buying votes but it could be outweighed by negative attention.
I can see why you would sell votes because it uses up VP and brings in more money, but I don't really see it helping small accounts much because although it would give them a little boost at the same time it would bring disappointment when it stopped.
There seems to be a lot of opinions on buying and selling votes and as much as it could be helpful I think it does more harm than good because if you buy votes there is no need to put effort into what you post, I also think it can take away from the community of steemit, I guess it just depends on the scale of how widely it'd done.
RE: Lets talk steemit #11 | Do you buy votes and why? An open conversation